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The enterprises are further trying to make the outcome more economical and hassles free by turning to services. /20

AI RWATCH: “OU R STRATEGY IS TO MAI NTAI N LEADE RSH I P” /24

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EDITORIAL

It’s Party Time Now!

S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M

We have finally reached at the end of our first year of operation in this region. As promised to the industry, we have stuck to our commitment of propagating the advantage of solutions and services business in this region and we believe that some how we have been successful in doing so. In the last twelve months, we have participated in most of the events dedicated to cloud computing, big data, mobility and security in the UAE and brought out special supplements on these topics and tried to involve the stake holders of the industry in order to know about their view points. We have also run surveys among the customers on these topics to know about their level of interest and state of deployment in the region.

In this one year, we have seen the industry maturing. The enterprises and the government organizations in this region have started adopting new age technologies including hybrid cloud, enterprise mobility, Big Data, etc. in order to make them smarter. The channel partners have also adapted to the requirements of the industry by bringing in specializations and certification around Big Data, Cloud Computing and Mobility.

Now that we see the market has matured and industry is quite excited about the new developments. Therefore on the eve of GITEX, we are bringing out our first award night, which is known as GEC Awards.

On the same day we will also bring out a golf tournament for the C-level executive in Dubai known as GEC Open. The objective of the event is not only to bring the execs closer to each other in an informal ambiance but also contribute to the charity for the Breast Cancer Arabia.

GEC stands for global enterprise connect. It means the global vendors who are responsible for the growth of ICT market in the region deserve a chance to relax for a day in Dubai and Tee off the serious and gruelling GITEX week the next day.

Under GEC Awards we will not only adjudge the vendors and their solutions but also felicitate the end customers for adopting green technology and taking their social corporate responsibility seriously.

So I expect to see a great fun ahead. Before I conclude, I should update the industry that we are also bringing out a great GITEX supplement which will focus on customers’ success stories to help the visiting customers understand the entire formula of success.

Thank you very much for your support and wish the same enthusiasm for many more years to come. ĂŤ

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CONTENTS VOLUME 02 ISSUE 01 AUGUST 2014 W W W. E N T E R P R I S E C H A N N E L S M E A . C O M

2014 COVER STORY

MPS IS NOT A HYPE! BUT A REALITY The enterprises are further trying to make the outcome more economical and hassles free by turning to services. /20

BROCADE /42

Transforming Channel Ecosystem

YAROB SAKHNINI REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MEMA AT BROCADE

BT GLOBAL SERVICES /43

Innovative Ways to Offer Security TAREQUE CHOUDHURY HEAD OF BT SECURITY & ADVISE, MEA, BT GLOBAL SERVICES

INNOVATIONS /44

VEEAM MANAGEMENT PACK (MP) V7 FOR SYSTEM CENTER

GISEC ROUND-UP GITEX 2014 to Showcase US$15 Billion Opportunity /46

GITEX Technology Week, will bring together more than 142,000 ICT professionals, 25,000 C-level executives and over 3,700 exhibitors from 61 countries

The new Veeam Management Pack (MP) version 7 for System Center is now generally available.

RED HAT /36

Leveraging The Cloud Factor FAYCAL SAILE GENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY AND AFRICA, RED HAT

EDITORIAL::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 03 CHANNEL STREET:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 06 ENTERPRISE SECURITY ::::::::::::::::::: 17, 25 SHOWCASE:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 18 PARTNER STREET::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: 40 ENT. COMMUNICATIONS:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::41 MY VIEWS ::::::: 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34, 38

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BE THE CHIEF IN INFORMATION SECURITY…

BE WITH

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Deliver On

Visit us at GITEX 2014 - Hall 2, Stand No. D2-1 Advts.indd 1

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CHANNEL

STREET QLIK SENSE DESKTOP IS FOR FREE TO DOWNLOAD

Qlik Sense Desktop is now available for free download for personal and business use; it’s a next-generation data visualization application that delivers a simple drag-and-drop interface for business users to rapidly create interactive visualizations, reports, and dashboards. It allows for the assembly and navigation of visualization apps that can be saved as local files to be shared and opened by other users. Novice users can get started by simply dragging an Excel document right into the application or by tapping into multiple data sources used within the business. It includes the Qlik patented data indexing engine to give users the unrestricted ability to explore their intuition and the relationships that exist in the data.

CONFIG TO BE CITRIX’S VAD in FRANCOPHONE AFRICA Config is going to be the second VAD of Citrix in Francophone Africa. As demand for virtualization, mobility management, networking and cloud services in the region continues to grow rapidly, Config will distribute all Citrix solutions, including network optimisation technologies, to resellers across the region to ensure organisations have the correct infrastructure in place to support the surge in demand for virtual and mobile workspaces. As a VAD, Config will distribute the full range of Citrix products and solutions including Citrix XenDesktop, XenApp, XenMobile, NetScaler and CloudBridge.

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BARMAK MEFTAH, ALIENVAULT PRESIDENT AND CEO

AlienVault Appears in Gartner Magic Quadrant for SIEM AlienVault has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Visionaries quadrant of the 2014 “Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management.” In addition, AlienVault was included in the “Critical Capabilities for Security Information and Event Management” report.As one of 15 companies included in the Magic Quadrant, and the only company to be positioned in the Visionaries quadrant, AlienVault was recognized for its ability to execute and completeness of vision.

AlienVault provides asset discovery, file integrity monitoring, vulnerability assessment and both host-based and network-based intrusion detection system (IDS) capabilities, all of which are built into its Unified Security Management platform.

“For the third year in a row, Gartner has positioned AlienVault in the Visionaries quadrant and this year we are the only vendor included, which we believe is great validation of our unique approach to addressing today’s advanced threats,” said Barmak Meftah, AlienVault President and CEO. “We are on

a mission to simplify the way security professionals detect and mitigate threats by unifying the technology and crowd-sourced threat intelligence into an easy-to-use, complete and affordable solution for companies of all sizes, especially the underserved midmarket.”

AlienVault was also included again this year in Gartner’s “Critical Capabilities for Security Information and Event Management” report, which is written to help SIEM buyers to define their requirements and select the appropriate technology.

In the report, AlienVault was assessed for common use cases such as SIEM, threat management and compliance.

Mohammad Mobasseri, CEO at emt Distribution said, “This will also boost the confidence of our channel partners and help them open up new avenues for business in the region.” emt Distribution is authorised to distribute AlienVault products in Middle East.

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F5 Touches $440.3 million in Q3 2014 For the third quarter of fiscal 2014, F5 has announced revenue of $440.3 million, up 5 percent from $420.0 million in the prior quarter and 19 percent from $370.3 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2013. GAAP net income was $79.5 million ($1.05 per diluted share), compared to $69.6 million ($0.91 per diluted share) in the prior quarter and $68.2 million ($0.86 per diluted share) in the third quarter a year ago.

Excluding the impact of stock-based compensation and amortization of purchased intangible assets, non-GAAP net income was $104.6 million ($1.39 per diluted share), compared to $96.9 million ($1.27 per diluted share) in the prior quarter and $88.4 million ($1.12 per diluted share) in the third quarter of last year.

“F5’s solid gains in Q3 were driven by strong growth in product revenue, up 5 percent sequentially and 20 percent year-over-year,” said John McAdam, F5 president and chief executive

officer. “Growing demand for our expanding array of systems and application services was fueled by increasing awareness and uptake of our security offerings and the appeal of our Good, Better, Best pricing options. During the quarter, sales of Good, Better, Best bundles grew 49 percent from the prior quarter and contributed to a significant increase in sales of software products and of security solutions in particular.

“Sales were generally solid across all geographic regions and vertical market segments, with the exception of Japan. EMEA continued to show signs of strengthening with an increase in year-over-year revenue growth for the fourth consecutive quarter.

For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2014, the company has set a revenue goal of $453 million to $463 million with a GAAP earnings target of $1.15 to $1.18 per diluted share and a non-GAAP earnings target of $1.46 to $1.49 per diluted share.

RED HAT ARM PARTNER TO EHANCE PARTNER COLLABORATION Red Hat is all set to launch Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program to enhance partner collaboration and facilitate partner-initiated system designs based on the 64-bit capable ARMv8-A architecture that include Red Hat software. The program will aim at silicon vendors, independent hardware vendors (IHVs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and original design manufacturers (ODMs), and launches with participation and support from several ARM ecosystem leaders, including AMD, American Megatrends, Inc., AppliedMicro, ARM, Broadcom, Cavium, Dell, HP and Linaro.

ARM Partner Early Access Program enables Red Hat and its partners to better address the evolving ARM ecosystem by supplying participants with early stage development software, documentation and tools, collaborating with partners to create a singular 64-bit ARM server software platform that relies on common standards, enabling faster innovation within ecosystem organizations, such as LEG, by providing a common development platform to enable deployment ready future 64-bit ARM software and gathering requirements around partner needs within the ARM ecosystem and using this information to create a unified common software platform.

NEXT GENERATION NORTON PRODUCTS GO BEYOND ANTIVIRUS Symantec released a sneak peek at upcoming offerings Norton Security and Norton Security with Backup.

It’s overhauling its consumer product portfolio to offer faster performance and stronger, defence-in-depth protection for people and their information as they use Android, Windows, Mac and iOS devices. The pre-release software is now available for free download from the Norton beta website.

To deliver on its vision and empower consumers to boldly go wherever they choose online with the confidence that their information is safe, Symantec is making significant changes and improvements in a few key areas: oSecurity is moving to the cloud, resulting in reduced on-disk definition size and real-time access to the Symantec Global Intelligence Network l The company’s multi-layered approach to security is upgraded at every level to better protect against threats that go beyond the scope of basic antivirus l New look and feel make it easy for users to access product features and manage protection across devices including laptops, tablets and smartphones l Options to securely back up precious photos, movies and memories on the PC to a user’s choice of location – online or to an external hard drive – offer peace of mind that information is protected if a PC is lost or stolen

OOREDOO READY FOR COMMERCIAL LAUNCH IN MYANMAR Ooredoo’s crystal clear voice calls and fast internet services will now be available in three of Myanmar’s major cities, Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon, followed by its commercial launch later this month.

Initially Ooredoo will provide a bundle of life-enriching services free of charge in a kick off promotion.

Ooredoo is the first global firm

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rolling out a next generation, purely UMTS900 network, with some of the most advanced 3G technology in the world, which will also future-proof the network being built. The benefits of this technology include a stronger signal, crystal clear sound and fast internet.

As Ooredoo works towards a

commercial launch, coverage will rapidly extend beyond these three main cities to include 68 cities and towns by 15 August, 2014.

The company is quickly striving to connect as many people as possible, enabling them to experience life-enriching and affordable services first-hand. Customers need to simply register and

purchase a SIM card for US $1.50 (1,500 kyats). SIM cards are readily available from one of Ooredoo’s 6,500 dealers.

Ross Cormack, CEO Ooredoo Myanmar, commented, “We are so excited to have met our commitment to bring mobile telecommunications to the people of Myanmar.”

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GEC OPEN GLOBAL ENTERPRISE CONNECT

2014

COME! BE A PART OF IT VENUE:TROON GOLF COURSE-THE ADDRESS MONTGOMERIE DUBAI DATE: SATURDAY,11 OCTOBER 2014 OPENING TEE-OFF: NOON TOURNAMENT FORMAT: TEXAS SCRAMBLE

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emt Holdings Enters Latin America emt Holdings, the group holding company for emt Distribution, has entered the Latin American market through incorporation TekVia. The incorporation of TekVia to manage and grow the Latin American Region is latest stage in emt Distribution’s global strategy to provide its resellers, Distributors and vendors with local pre and post-sales support.

Speaking about the new development, Mohammad Mobasseri, CEO at emt Distribution MEA and Group Board Member of emt Holdings, said, “The new company, TekVia is incorporated in the USA and will be based in Argentina. Organizations in the Americas and around the world are routinely compromised by

attackers that seek to steal their financial assets and intellectual property. emt Distribution is committed to helping organizations across the Americas address their security gap by equipping them with the tools, intelligence and expertise required to find and stop attackers that bypass their preventive computer security measures.”

“Heading up the team of security solution experts is Cecilia Zuvic, Managing Partner at TekVia. Along with a team of consultants and engineers, chosen for their experience in selecting, implementing and supporting IT security solutions, Ms. Zuvic will build on emt Distribution’s strengths by delivering value-added services to resellers across the Americas,” he concluded.

ALCATEL-LUCENT LAN SWITCHING GETS “VERY STRONG” RATING Industry analyst firm, Current Analysis has improved Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise’s rating to “Very Strong”. New technologies, such as the latest addition of the OmniSwitch 6860 advanced LAN switch positions Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise to offer a comprehensive LAN switching portfolio from data center and core to distribution and access.

Innovative capabilities, including embedded analytics on the new OmniSwitch 6860, integration with ClearPass access management software for full BYOD capabilities, and Unified Access through a converged wired and wireless management platform, helped support the improved rating.

DEWA’S CAMPAIGN AT GITEX 2014 Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) shall participate in GITEX 2014, to be held from 12-16 October at the Dubai World Trade Centre. It will showcase its latest smart services and initiatives as part of its ongoing efforts to support the vision of HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to ensure happiness of Dubai’s residents by enabling them to use smart services anytime anywhere. DEWA’s smart initiatives are also in line with its vision to become a sustainable world-class utility and reinforce its leading position in the field of smart services.

Among DEWA’s key initiatives that will be highlighted at GITEX, are its three smart initiatives that support Dubai’s vision to be the smartest city in the world. The first initiative involves encouraging households and building owners to install photovoltaic solar panels to generate electricity. This is part of DEWA’s efforts to preserve the environment.

PROLOGIX BOOTCAMP SEMINARS IN EAST AFRICA Prologix Distribution is taking into African heartland the breakthrough technologies in the field of Wireless Connectivity, Telecom, Test & Measurement and Video Surveillance solutions through a planned series of roadshows in Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. The Bootcamp Seminars will be held in Dar-es-Salaam, Kampala and Nairobi on August 18th, 20th and 22nd respectively.

Globally renowned brands like Cambium Networks, Trango Systems, Sangoma Technologies, Peplink, LevelOne and IDEAL Industries will participate in the roadshow. The regional heads will travel to Africa to present to the audience the latest on technological updates and demonstrate how their products and solutions will help overcome connectivity challenges across the continent.

Aditya Sahaya, Director – Business Development at Prologix Distribution said, “According to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) research, in the year 2013, the total number of internet users in Africa was 16 for every 100 people; whereas the same statistics across Europe was 75 for every 100 and 61 for every 100 in the US. The internet penetration rate is only 12% of the total population in Tanzania and 13% in Uganda. Kenya scores better at 28% and is characterized by those ISPs which have transformed themselves into second-tier telcos by rolling out national and metropolitan fiber backbones and wireless broadband access networks.”

STARLINK IS THE NEW DISTRIBUTOR OF INFOBLOX StarLink has become a Distributor of Infoblox, the leader in Automated Network Control. StarLink will sell, install and support Infoblox products and solutions through its Channel Partners to customers in the Middle East and Turkey.

Infoblox helps enterprises, service providers and government organizations make their networks

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more available and secure for their most strategic initiatives such as cloud, virtualization, SDN and the transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

Unlike traditional networks which are manual, fragile and vulnerable, Infoblox technologies make essential services of the modern network (such as DNS, DHCP and IP Address Management),

automated, resilient and performing at their highest levels.

“Access Control is one of our fundamental solutions, so enabling our Channel to offer complete network visibility to their customers with Infoblox’s best-of-breed DDI technology is a great milestone.

Other core pillars of our story are Advanced Threat Protection Vulner-

ability Management, and with the rapid rise in DNS-based attacks lately, our Partners can now help enterprise and government customers in the region combat pervasive threats and protect their networks against DNS vulnerabilities.” said Avinash Advani, VP - Business Strategy at StarLink.

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GEC AWARDS GLOBAL ENTERPRISE CONNECT

2014

WATCH THE TITANS VENUE : THE ADDRESS MONTGOMERIE DUBAI DATE: SATURDAY,11 OCTOBER 2014 TIME : 7.00 PM EVENT: GALA DINNER & NETWORKING

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TE to Acquire the Business of Delixing TE Connectivity has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the business of Xiamen Delixing Electric Equipment Co., Ltd. (“Delixing”) and Xiamen SIBAS Connectors Co., Ltd. (“Sibas”).

Delixing/Sibas is a privately owned manufacturer of heavy duty connectors used in machinery equipment, factory automation, power management and railway applications. Delixing/Sibas, which generated revenues in 2013 of $10 million, was established in 1998 and is located in Xiamen City in South Fujian, China. Their heavy duty connectors expand TE’s range of solutions for harsh environment applications. When the transaction is completed – which is expected in fiscal year 2015 – the business will report in to TE’s Industrial Solutions segment.

“The acquisition of Delixing/Sibas positions TE to capitalize on revenue growth opportunities by increasing our market presence in China and by

strengthening our position in harsh environment connectivity solutions,” said Thomas Schmidt, senior vice president and general manager, TE Industrial Equipment business unit. “Combining the capabilities and geographical reach of both TE and Delixing/Sibas will enable the company to offer its customers some of the most comprehensive products, technology and services within the industry.”

Qinghai Wu, General Manager, Delixing/Sibas, said, “This is an exciting evolution in our company’s growth as we explore new opportunities presented by TE’s market scale and reach outside China. We are a successful local company with quality products and an established customer base. Now, with TE’s comprehensive product portfolio and enhanced technology and services, we anticipate bringing our customers even more success, as well as increased opportunities.”

LENOVO’S PROFIT GOES UP BY 13 % IN Q1 Lenovo Group has reported results for its first fiscal quarter ended June 30, 2014, with quarterly revenue of US$10.4 billion, an 18 percent increase year-over-year while quarter pre-tax income increased 22 percent year-over-year to US$264 million. Earnings grew 23 percent year-over-year to US$214 million, while the Company hit market share and financial performance milestones.

Lenovo maintained its number three ranking in smart connected devices growing shipments by 28 percent year-over-year. It has been the world’s largest PC maker for five consecutive quarters with its highest-ever quarterly market share of 19.4 percent up 2.7 points year-over-year, driven by big share gains in EMEA and the Americas.

The Company’s gross profit for the first fiscal quarter increased 13 percent year-over-year to US$1.3 billion, with gross margin at 13 percent. Operating profit for the quarter grew 40 percent year-over year to US$283 million. Basic earnings per share for the first fiscal quarter was 2.06 US cents, or 15.97 HK cents. Net cash reserves as of June 30, 2014, totaled US$3.58 billion.

In Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA), Lenovo had an extremely strong quarter with revenue increasing 49 percent or US$921 million year-over-year to reach US$2.8 billion, or 27 percent of Lenovo’s first quarter worldwide revenue. EMEA saw record highs in PC share and operating margin, hitting the number one position in notebooks for the first time and achieving a number one position in 15 EMEA countries, while smartphone shipments surpassed 1 million devices.

MANAGEENGINE’S FREE ANDROID APP TO MONITOR WI-FI SIGNALS ManageEngine has launched WiFi Monitor Plus. Available immediately, the free diagnostic app lets IT admins in SMBs and large enterprises monitor, analyze and survey WiFi signals in any area, directly from their Android mobile devices. WiFi Monitor Plus is available for download at http://ow.ly/zsHg9.

WiFi Monitor Plus offers both Analyzer and Surveyor modes, making it the first WiFi monitor to offer both modes in one app.

Analyzer mode lets users view available networks, graphs of the scanned networks’ signal strength, and channels with interference. The information helps users take appropriate actions to optimize WiFi connectivity.

Surveyor mode allows users to survey a site for the best signal strength.

The heat map feature indicates the strength of the scanned WiFi networks.

Users can upload their floor plans and survey different locations on the site for signal strength.

The application’s simple, user-friendly GUI helps users quickly access relevant data including best signals, overlaps in a channel, and site locations with the best signal strength. The app also has a Channel Graph widget that users can add to their devices’ home screens to instantly access the information without having to invoke the app. With this free app, IT admins gain valuable insights such as the need to switch off specific channels due to interference or deploy access points to help improve WiFi connectivity.

SAGE ERP X3 VERSION 7 AT GITEX Sage Middle East will launch the new Sage ERP X3 version 7 during its participation at the GITEX Technology Week on October 12-16, 2014, at the Dubai World Trade Centre.

“Sage ERP X3 version 7 unlocks new possibilities for businesses to focus on accelerating growth by automating complex business

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processes and providing more efficient solutions to access, share and use business-critical information even on mobile devices. The GCC and the rest of the Middle East are important growth destinations for Sage and GITEX Technology Week is an key platform to reinforce strategic partnerships and business relations in the region and to

showcase our latest innovations, especially the powerful global business management capabilities of the Sage ERP X3 version 7,” said Keith Fenner, Senior Vice President Sales – Sage ERP Africa and Head of Sage Middle East Sage ERP X3 version 7 allows businesses to monitor performance, serve customers better and be

notified of events that require attention through several new features, including an intuitive web and mobile interface based on HTML5 that supports common browsers and is highly customisable. Version 7 also offers a variety of apps and comes with a mobility development kit, compatible with iOS, Windows Phone and most Android devices.

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IN PUBLIC

“Organizations that don’t accelerate their digital business transformation will lose market position,” ALLIE YOUNG, VICE PRESIDENT AND DISTINGUISHED ANALYST AT GARTNER

VMware Reports 17% Growth

WEB CLIPS AOC LAUNCHES 34” WQHD MONITOR AOC is setting new standards for “large”: with the u3477Pqu, the display specialist has set sail to new shores as it combines size with enhanced productivity. This is the right choice for cinema enthusiasts and demanding multi-task users alike.

Stunning image clarity, detail and more than 1

VMware boasts a Year-over-Year revenue growth of 17% to $1.46 Billion, Year-over-Year Revenue Growth of 18% excluding Pivotal and divestitures in 2013 and witnessed growing customer adoption of Software-Defined Data Center portfolio and growth product lines.

“We continue to see strong performance across our business, further evidence that VMware is uniquely positioned as IT transitions from client server computing to the mobile cloud era,” said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware.

“Across the board, customers are turning to VMware solutions to help chart an efficient path

to the future without sacrificing the vital needs for security, availability and compliance required by all businesses.”

In the second quarter, VMware received further industry recognition from Gartner, Inc. • For the fifth consecutive year Gartner named VMware a leader in the 2014 x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure Magic Quadrant.

• In June, AirWatch by VMware was positioned as a leader in the EMM • In April, VMware appeared in their Data Center Networking MQ for the first time as a Visionary.

billion colours make sure you get the full picture when displaying high-resolution images with 4.95 million pixels on the UltraWide panoramic 21:9 screen. The monitor boasts an impressive resolution of 3440 x 1440 pixels on the more than a quarter of a square meter display area, and the aspect ratio allows viewers to watch movies without black bars on top and bottom. AOC provides the u3477Pqu with manifold connections and keeps an eye on the environment.

AUTOCAD 2015 NOW IN MIDDLE EAST Omnix International brings new AutoCAD 2015 edition, the latest release from one of the world’s leading CAD applications to the Middle East.

ESET SUMMER BONANZA TO DRIVE SALES

AutoCAD 2015 offers a more refined interface

ESET has kicked off four exciting summer promotions aimed to further drive the sales of its market leading IT security solutions for business and home users in the Middle East. The three-month long campaigns, named ‘ESET Summer Bonanza’, ‘Gold Mania’ and ‘Summer Retail Rewards’ offer target groups the chance to win all expense paid holidays, gold bars and gift vouchers respectively while the ‘Superb Ramadan Offer’ grants extended licenses to all businesses that purchase ESET solutions during Ramadan.

The ‘Superb Ramadan Offer’ is valid through the Holy Month of Ramadan and the remaining promotions are currently under way and will conclude on the 30th of September, 2014. “ESET’s aim is to enhance the security posture of the Middle East and this involves encouraging the use of our latest IT security solutions by both home and business users.” said Elham Alizadeh, Channel Marketing Manager at ESET Middle East. Under the ‘Gold Mania’ program, home users will have the chance to win a Gold bar through a draw that will be held every alternate day. Entry into this draw results from purchase of a licence for any of ESET’s home security products portfolio which includes ESET Smart Security, ESET NOD32 Antivirus, ESET Mobile Security, ESET Cybersecurity Pro, ESET Cyber Security and the ESET Multi-Device Security Pack 5+5.

presented in a darker and more modern look that

that allows for a richer user experience. It is also lets colors stand out and reduce user eyestrain.

New Tab page feature allows users the ability to quickly open new and existing drawings, while ribbon galleries save time and clicks by visually accessing drawing content directly from the ribbon.

“With the release of this new edition, design professionals can now design almost any idea imaginable with maximum productivity and connectivity.” said Dr. Jayant Deshpande, Director - CAE Division, Omnix International SERVICE PROVIDERS HAVE A CRUCIAL ROLE IN DIGITAL ERA Garter Inc. believes, as enterprises move to become digital businesses, opportunities are

LEADING HOSPITALITY BRAND CHOOSES RAMCO HCM ON CLOUD Kerzner International Holdings Limited (“Kerzner”), a leading international developer and operator of destination resorts, casinos and luxury hotels including Atlantis, One&Only and Mazagan resorts has chosen Ramco’s cloud-based HR & Talent Management Software with Analytics. Now, Ramco HCM on Cloud will be implemented across 9 countries covering 10000+ employees of Kerzner International.

Ramco HCM on Cloud will provide Manpower Planning and Budgeting, Recruitment, Employee Data Management, Performance Management, Career and Succession Planning, Training, Employee Self Service and Payroll modules to Kerzner. Since the global launch of its cloud based HR & Talent Management software, Ramco has added on an average one customer a week, including leading Fortune 100 and multinational brands across the globe.

arising for service providers to play a crucial role in the digital era. Service providers should begin to align and adapt their organizational structure, capabilities, offerings, and engagement and delivery models to thrive in this new digital environment.

Gartner predicts that by 2017, 60 percent of Global 1000 organizations will execute on at least one revolutionary and currently unimaginable business transformation effort and that by 2023, superior digital business capabilities will lead four out of five industry leaders to reposition their brand promise or build new brands.

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Customers Achieve 103% ROI Epicor Software Corporation has announced the availability of a new Total Economic Impact (TEI) study that examines the potential return on investment (ROI) companies can achieve with the Epicor enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite.

The study is based on detailed interviews conducted with a number of Epicor customers worldwide. Their combined attributes and experiences form a composite organization from which Forrester developed a framework to measure the potential financial impact and investment return of Epicor ERP on an organization. Based on the analysis, Epicor ERP enabled the composite organization to achieve risk-adjusted monetary benefits of more than $3.8 million, with a risk-adjusted ROI of 103%

and a payback period of 15 months, in addition to $1.25 million in productivity savings bringing the total economic benefit to more than $5 million.

Furthermore, with Epicor ERP the composite organization achieved significant business benefits and productivity improvements across its supply chain management, production management, planning and scheduling, sales, finance and IT functions including: l Increased inventory turns resulting in a 15% reduction in average inventory levels l 12% time savings (2,500 hours per year) in production control as a result of Epicor’s visual Kanban and lean manufacturing capabilities l Increased productivity due to the integrated manufacturing execution system

FLEXPOD SALES CROSS $3 BILLION FlexPod integrated infrastructure solution has generated $3 billion in joint sales since its launch in 2010.

FlexPod unit shipments have grown 81 percent year-over-year, with demand for FlexPod solutions now reaching a $2 billion annualized demand run rate.

By combining compute, networking and storage into a single system, integrated infrastructure provides the ability to dramatically improve the efficiency and agility of data centre infrastructure, while reducing deployment risks. As a result, integrated infrastructure has emerged as one of the fastest growing segments of the IT infrastructure market.

LEXMARK LEADING MPS VENDOR Leading European-based industry analyst firm Quocirca rates Lexmark International as a leader in managed print services (MPS). “ Since its $280 million acquisition of Perceptive Software in 2010, it has transformed its overall business, deepening its business process expertise,” Quocirca reports. “Its strong position in the market is boosted by a mature service portfolio and its industry leading business process expertise, which is becoming a key differentiator in the market1.”

The report further states, “By combining Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Business Process Management (BPM) technology with intelligent distributed capture solutions, including workgroup multifunction printers and mobile devices, Lexmark has a strong proposition for connecting unstructured print and digital information with structured information.

THECUS EXPANDS DISTRIBUTION AGREEMENT WITH GCT THECUS Technology has authorized Genius Computer Technology (GCT), its distributor in the Middle East, Africa and CIS countries, to be its official regional branch office across the countries it represents. GCT will manage and develop all the distribution channels across the region as well as be the first point of contact for partners in the regions for technical support. GCT will also be responsible for generating marketing opportunities for its authorized THECUS partners. This new partnership follows the signing of its distribution agreement in January this year.

THECUS, founded in 2004, focuses on hardware and software integration and development; and the core protocols of digital media storage. In order to develop optimal storage solutions for such a wide range of users (from B2B to B2C), THECUS has assembled a best-in-class development team with extensive experience in both storage hardware and software development. By combining engineering expertise with a keen focus on the end-user experience, THECUS builds products that are not only powerful but easy-to-use, making advanced storage products accessible to users of all skill levels.

GCT is one of the leading distributors and solution providers in the field of IT peripherals, networking, mobile and PC accessories. Headquartered in Jebel Ali, UAE, with branches in KSA, Syria and Lebanon, the company represents some leading accessories brands.

SOLID PERFORMANCE OF ALPHA DATA IN H1 2014 Alpha Data attained 30 per cent year-on-year growth for the first half of 2014 driven by major accomplishments such as the completion of a data center development contract for ‘Ankabut,’ the UAE’s Advanced National Research and Education Network (NREN). The highly productive period also saw the company being named ‘Out-

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standing Citrix Solution Advisor 2013’ for the Middle East, winning a number of large projects collectively worth more than AED 200 million, and launching a new company called Alpha Data Recruitment.

In April, Alpha Data reaffirmed its status as a market innovator by announcing that it would be locally distributing the ‘Magnolia

Screen,’ the most advanced and highest-quality resolution LED display to be launched in the region. The screen uses the revolutionary Common Cathode technology to display crisp and seamless 1920 x 1080 Full HD images at a 130” diagonal size.

Another first-half highlight for Alpha Data was its being named

‘Outstanding Citrix Solution Advisor - 2013’ for the Middle East by US-based multinational software company Citrix Systems in May. The recent launching of Alpha Data Recruitment will further expand the company’s role to include the connecting of enterprises and job candidates across the MENA market.

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2X Organised Event in Jeddah 2X Software successfully organised its channels event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

The event was organized in collaboration with EMT, the official 2X Software distributor for the Middle East region, to update the channel with the latest information about 2X solutions.

The event, which lasted for half a day, also included a live demo of the flagship product, 2X ApplicationServer XG. The

partners were able to personally discover how easy it was to deliver applications and virtual desktops to any devices.

Simonetta Mercieca, Sales Director, 2X Software, stated, “We are very pleased with the results of this workshop part of the Saudi Arabia road show.

Jeddah is one the country’s most dynamic business areas, and 2X Software is doing everything possible to increase its presence.”

Mohammad Mobasseri, CEO at EMT Distribution said, “Resellers see EMT Distribution as the distributor of choice for selected solutions sold and supported throughout the Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa regions. EMT Distribution is well positioned to provide its channel partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with pre- and post-sales support with our team of experienced product specialists.”

WEB CLIPS ENTERPRISES TO HAVE A DIGITAL RISK OFFICER More than half of CEOs will have a senior “digital” leader role in their staff by the end of 2015, according to the 2014 CEO and Senior Executive Survey by Gartner, Inc. Gartner said that by 2017, one-third of large enterprises engaging in digital business models and activities will also have a digital risk officer (DRO) role or equivalent.

By 2020, 60 percent of digital businesses will suffer major service failures due to the inability of the IT security team to manage digital risk in new technology and use cases. IT, operational technology (OT), the Internet of Things (IoT) and physical security technologies will have interdependencies that require a risk-based approach to governance and management. Digital risk management is

SPECTRAMI SHIFTS ITS HQ

the next evolution in enterprise risk and security

Spectrami has moved to a bigger and better office in Dubai, UAE. The new office, which is located at Mazaya Business Avenue in Jumeirah Lake Towers, measures 4,500 sq. ft. and can seat a workforce of 45 employees.

The new office will cover UAE, KSA and South Africa, with dedicated resources allotted to each of these markets. Speaking about the achievement, Anand Choudha, Managing Director, Spectrami, said, “Among other facilities, the new office houses an improved Customer Experience Center (CEC), which will showcase all the products and solutions we offer through our partnerships with leading technology vendors.”Choudha explained that in addition to the new CEC, the office is also equipped with a world class training lab, which can offer all kinds of training and certification programs to its customers and channel partners. The number of meeting rooms has also been increased from 1 to 3 in the new facility.”

technologies protected.

for digital businesses by expanding the scope of

TECH MAHINDRA SIGNS JV WITH MIDAD HOLDING IN KSA Tech Mahindra has signed a Joint Venture (JV) agreement with Midad Holding, which is a subsidiary of Al Fozan, a preeminent group with diversified business interests in Saudi Arabia.

The JV will be called Tech Mahindra Arabia.

Tech Mahindra will have 51% ownership while Midad will own 49% stake. Headquartered in Al Khobar Tech Mahindra Arabia will also have presence across other major cities in Saudi and

MOVEMENTS GEOFF THOMAS has joined Polycom as its President Asia Pacific. In this role, Thomas is responsible for leading the company’s regional sales strategy.

Cyberoam has appointed MUKIL MADANAN as its Enterprise Account Manager for Middle East.

Oxygen has appointed ROHAN DANIEL NAIR as the new Strategic Marketing Director for MEA region.

Fortinet has appointed MAYA ZAKHOUR as its Middle East Channel Director.

5.1 NUMBER GAME

%

growth

happened in the (APeJ) Enterprise Applications (EA) software market in 2013.

will be functional post the regulatory approvals.

The regional strength of Midad Holding and the global connectivity of Tech Mahindra will create a synergic value proposition for customers in KSA. NEC ADDS TO ITS MEDICAL DIAGNOSTIC DISPLAYS The NEC MD302C6 high-resolution display is specifically designed for trained physicians to view colour and greyscale digital images, for diagnostics image reporting in radiography, as well as CT, MRI and other medical imaging techniques.

“With features such as picture-by-picture mode, the NEC MD302C6 replaces the traditional setup of two 3 megapixel displays positioned side by side. Instead, trained physicians carrying out diagnostics image reporting can experience two screens in one, which means there is no viewing interruption from a centre bezel, and the footprint is reduced” said Ian Gobey Middle East General Manager at NEC Display Solutions Europe.

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A10 Networks Adds DDoS Protection to Thunder CGN A10 Networks shall add integrated DDoS (distributed denial of service) protection functionality to its popular and widely deployed Thunder CGN (Carrier Grade Networking) products which provide IPv4 address extension and IPv6 migration capabilities. The addition offers carriers and service providers a way to prevent DDoS attacks from compromising their revenue-generating network infrastructure.

A10 Thunder CGN products now provide specialized DDoS protection for network infrastructure offering public-facing services like websites, DNS, and messaging services, limiting exposure to sophisticated and costly DDoS attacks that bring online services down

and expose the entire network to additional vulnerabilities. Thunder CGN products operate at high performance, allowing them to prevent huge, volumetric, multi-vector attacks, protecting IPv4 and IPv6 NAT (network address translation) address pools, guarding against large attacks from external sources, and preventing compromised or “zombied” internal resources from attacking users outside the network.

The new Integrated DDoS capabilities for Thunder CGN are further enhanced by A10’s new Thunder SPE family of appliances also announced. Thunder SPE appliances leverage A10’s innovative new Security and Policy Engine (SPE).

COMMVAULT OFFERS NEW SERVICES Two new service offerings from CommVault shall help enterprises accelerate time to value and drive greater business efficiencies from their data management environments.

The new CommVault Operational Efficiency Assessment and Simpana Software Personalization services provide customers new ways to optimize IT investments, extend the value of their information assets, automate their key processes and benefit from best practices in modern data management. The offerings complement CommVault’s existing scope of services and are indicative of the company’s commitment to empower customers to accelerate, extend, and optimize the value of their data management strategies.

BURHAN IS CYBEROAM’S PLATINUM PARTNER IN KUWAIT Burhan Technology Co., will be Cyberoam’s Platinum Partner for Kuwait, in an attempt to provide future ready security and meet the growing demand for network security in Kuwait.

By partnering with Burhan Technologies Co. - a leading global business and information Technology Company, delivering consulting, systems integration and outsourcing solutions, Cyberoam intends to enable growth, mutually and beneficially, enabling to cater to the growing need for network security in Kuwait. The partnership anticipates to capitalize on this experience of Burhan in the region and to reach out to organisations offering Cyberoam’s next-generation solutions like NGFW.

TP-LINK TO STRENGTHEN ITS POSITION IN ME TP-LINK, a global provider of SOHO and SMB networking products will be participating at this year’s GITEX Technology Week 2014.

TP-LINK said having been in the market since 2011, the company has started to develop its business in Middle East and Africa and wants to grow deeper and strengthen its market position.

“High speed Internet con nectivity is one of the focus for today’s WiFi solutions. We will be explaining and demonstrating these products to our channel partners and their clients at our stand throughout the week-long technology fair,” Denny Liang, General Manager, TP-LINK Middle East said.

Liang said TP-LINK will also be educating its channel partners and visitors that come to the stand on the various networking, WiFi solutions, 3G and wireless router offerings that the company has for the SOHO and SMB segment. “We want our partners to share their business experience with us and GITEX offers the perfect avenue for us to receive feedback. We also want to use the show this year, to educate people on how to use our networking range of products,” he said.

TP-LINK will be exhibiting at GITEX Technology Eeek 2014 in Zabeel Hall, stand Z-D30.

DIMENSION DATA TO SELL 1 MILLION NEW SEATS OF LYNC VOICE BY 2017 Dimension Data aims sell one million new seats of Microsoft Lync Enterprise Voice, delivered either on premises or in a private cloud by 2017. Microsoft Lync - one of the most popular unified communications tools on the market - is a rich client application that provides presence, instant messaging, voice, video, ad hoc collaboration and online meeting capabilities through

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a single interface.

“A 2013 study carried out by the T3i Group on the Impact of Microsoft Lync on the Enterprise Voice Market- 2013 revealed that 93% of enterprises have plans or already using or trying Microsoft Lync overall, which is up from 80% last year, while 59% of enterprises are planning or already deploying Lync Voice, up from 45% in 12

months. With over 500 Lync projects completed globally, Dimension Data has deep experience in delivering end-to-end Lync deals including hardware, networking, deployment, adoption services, as well as managed services. ”While these target numbers are impressive, what’s particularly exciting for Dimension Data is that we’re targeting all delivery

models as part of this initiative.

These include: Mature markets where there’s a desire to enable knowledge workers to communicate easily wherever they are and emerging markets where many organisations are leapfrogging traditional communications tools and prepare for as-a-service is relevant across all markets.

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ENTERPRISE SECURITY

SOURCEFIRE

Leveraging Cisco’s Route to Market

Sourcefire, now a part of Cisco, is rejigging its channel partner program and integrating the best of Cisco’s with its own partner program. n B Y: M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

I

n October 2013, Sourcefire was acquired

by Cisco and now the company is in the process of integrating the elements of its channel partner program with that of Cisco’s. The acquisition has given Sourcefire an opportunity to expand its reach with Cisco’s route to market where almost every large organization in the world uses Cisco technology and almost every country in the world has a Cisco office. “It is really exciting to be a part of Cisco. We now have a huge addressable market because in itself Cisco is a route to market for us as a security organization within Cisco. When we were Sourcefire, it was kind of hand-to-hand combat. We were fighting for every deal. We have enjoyed great success and huge growth and I think we are in great shape to accelerate that because all of a sudden Cisco is one of our channel to the market and if we can leverage that right then we have really exciting times ahead of us,” comments Anthony Perridge, EMEA Channel Director at Sourcefire, now a part of Cisco.

As far as the channel is concerned, Sourcefire has taken the best of its program and taken the best from Cisco programs to come up with a super program. Basically, the company is keen to retain 100% of Sourcefire’s security centric, security experts channel partners. The new and important addition to the Cisco channel program is Cisco Security Express which is designed specifically to give specialist security channels access to Cisco security solutions. The key components are enablement at very low investment, margin

protection through deal registration and choice to focus on one product family (if desired) rather than forcing the partner to adopt the entire portfolio. “We believe this will help us retain the traditional Sourcefire channel and indeed encourage them to adopt the other Cisco security solutions. It represents huge opportunity to scale our business with the channel,” adds Perridge.

He informs that the company is investing a lot in empowerment and training of the channel.

“We have lots of different products now that we are a part of Cisco. So, it is important that we put programs that are not too time-consuming but get channel partners enabled so that they can help us do the business,” he says.

As far as security challenges in the MEA market are concerned, Perridge feels they are the same as all over the world. However in the Middle East, it is a little bit more in terms of availability of skills and in terms of people. “In our presentations, we talk about industrialization of hacking. It is easier to buy a hacking kit from the internet and get updated. It is becoming a booming business and it is hard for the end-users to keep pace with that. One of the outcomes is that finding skills are really difficult,” he adds. As a vendor, he thinks, one of the ways Sourcefire can help people is by providing managed services.

The other way is by providing a broad product portfolio so that if the customers want to buy more than one solution from Cisco they can.

“The reason why that is important is because we address the entire threat continuum before and after. The challenge is that you have to manage

ANTHONY PERRIDGE

EMEA CHANNEL DIRECTOR AT SOURCEFIRE, NOW A PART OF CISCO

“We are going through the final stages of integration of Sourcefire and Cisco.

Ultimately what would remain important to us is the staff retention, staff motivation and our route to market in scaling the business." and integrate too many different products and manage them. It gets difficult. So, with Cisco, addressing the entire threat continuum is helping customers to close that gap by making it easier to manage the security solutions,” he says.

FINALLY...

Come Cisco’s new financial year which is at the end of July and beginning of August, a new Cisco security organization will be launched. It will be a totally new business unit within Cisco. “We are going through the final stages of integration of Sourcefire and Cisco. We are in the planning stages. Ultimately what would remain important to us is the staff retention, staff motivation and our route to market in scaling the business,” he concludes. ë

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SHOWCASE

BULWARK

Offering the Best Support

It is practically not possible for a vendor to be present all over the world and hence, the importance of a local distributor who understands the technology of the vendor becomes paramount. This is where Bulwark becomes very handy to the vendors on its portfolio.

JOSE THOMAS

MD, BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES

n B Y: M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

C

onnected devices are increasingly tremendously along with the exponential increase in the data. So, application security, data security, network security are all gaining importance from all the customers. Customers are becoming more and more aware of the security breaches and they understand the need to implement latest technology products to secure themselves. The value-added distributors who are dealing in IT security solutions are becoming more active in their approach. “From last 14 years, we are always trying to bring the latest technology products in the region that can address the security concerns of most of the end users in the region. We work through System Integration companies and the channels to reach the end users. We also provide them support to do the implementation properly so that the end-user experience is much better,” comments Jose Thomas, MD, Bulwark Technologies.

Thomas says that whatever products Bulwark has been handling so far, it wants to give the best support. That’s of paramount importance even for vendors and customers. Customers are looking for a support locally available and vendors also looking that the product is being served properly

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and maintained properly and used properly by the customers. “We are able to do that, we have a team of engineers who support technically,” he says.

In general, for Bulwark, the first step is to enable the partners to understand the technology.

So, Bulwark regularly engages in the sales and technical enablement. It also conducts events and participates in road shows. It also supports the partners in doing the POCs. Accellion began its relationship with Bulwark almost two years ago and the relationship has been quite successful. “Being a US-based company and doing business in the Middle East where the business is done totally in a different manner stresses the importance of having a local partner.

Another important aspect is the technical support. While our solution is quite simple, it still needs a lot of technical know-how to implement and train partners. That’s where Bulwark comes in very handy,” says Paul Steiner, MD, EMEA, Accellion.

Steiner says that the company has a strong customer base with customers in every country in this region. With Bulwark, it is trying to penetrate the market in Middle East.

Ashok Kumar V, Chief of Business Development, EMEA & SAARC, TalariaX voices the

“From last 14 years, we are always trying to bring the latest technology products in the region that can address the security concerns of most of the end users in the region.” same opinion about Bulwark. The company signed Bulwark as its exclusive distributor almost three months ago. The company has a footprint in 20+ countries worldwide. It follows a different initiative when it comes to each market. “When it comes to Middle East, it is a different ball game.

None of the approach we take in other markets works here. Here, we have to go with a person who is well-acquainted with what it takes to be successful in this market. To top it all, they have to be technically and commercially conversant.

They should understand how to deal with downstream channel. All of this is handled by Bulwark today,” he adds.

Thomas says that before announcing, TalariaX

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SHOWCASE

MATILDA VELIU

MARKETING MANAGER, FRATELLO HOLDING

(FROM LEFT TO RIGHT) PAUL STEINER, MD, EMEA, ACCELLION, JOSE THOMAS, MD, BULWARK TECHNOLOGIES AND ASHOK KUMAR V, CHIEF OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, EMEA & SAARC, TALARIAX

PAUL STEINER MD, EMEA, ACCELLION

“We met them two years ago and the chemistry was right. We had worked with a number of partners in the region before and that didn’t work out. They are very well-trained technically and can sell the products with a good network of partners in the region. So, we are quite happy with Bulwark.”

wanted Bulwark to be fully enabled in the technical and sales activities, ready stock and demo units. “We had to put so many things into place like get the products down, train their personnel, evolve GTM initiatives etc. We are presently working with Bulwark on several projects in tandem right across the marketing, presales initiatives, sales opportunities as well. All of this takes some time,” says Ashok.

ASHOK KUMAR V

CHIEF OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, EMEA & SAARC, TALARIAX

“Distribution is of two types: volume and value. When it comes to value, it is a different proposition. You need to invest a lot of time to build that. So, Bulwark has invested time and money to build the necessary infrastructure right from marketing to presales and after sales support. This apart they represent reputed principals. If you look at the portfolio of products, it’s pretty impressive and they have their success stories there. They have a ready downstream channel too. With all of this, they are ready. When they have technologies such as ours, we need people who can understand that first of all and then bring it to market very quickly. Bulwark is all of it and that’s the reason why we choose them.”

FINALLY...

As clear from the feedback of the vendors, Bulwark is geared-up on all fronts to make the products on its portfolio a success. “If you look from the vendor perspective, they must be thinking, how they reach the end-users. What we

are making is the link between these two. All the vendors cannot be all over the world providing proper support and all. They definitely need people like us,” concludes Thomas. ë

At the UAE Security Expo, Gisec 2014, Matilda Veliu, the Marketing Manager of Fratello Holding talked to Enterprise Channels MEA team about the company’s excellence as far as the information security is concerned. Under the holding there are seven companies namely Gulf Cyber for cyber security, mobile applications, defense and government solutions, S&S Networks for network security and network infrastructure, 6Sigmea for open source intelligence, ballistics, criminology etc., Logos Networking for CCTV surveillance, Araknos UAE for security of IT systems, Falcon-I for training & consultancy and Altron for planning, designing, engineering, implementation, maintenance, operation & monitoring of data centers which integrate best-ofbreed non-IT critical infrastructure technologies.

Their customers mainly are government agencies, and public entities. They have worked with ministries of industry, defense, and healthcare in UAE and Italy. They believe their services are more suitable for Government, Law enforcement agencies, and public entities.

As far as their focus in marketing activities is concerned, they are already operating in Middle East but are desirous of expanding their activities in the entire GCC region. They already have projects in Qatar and have also entered into partnerships with firms in KSA and Africa. Further, they look forward to expand their business in KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Africa, etc; they are quite open to the possibilities for setting up their own offices at these places. ë

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COVER STORY

MPS

MPS is Not Hype, But A Reality!

With the enterprises moving from physical environment to virtual and mobile world of operations, the printing technology has also undergone changes to cater to the cloud and mobility environment.

But the enterprises are further trying to make the outcome more economical and hassles free by turning to services. n W O R D S : S A N J AY M O H A PAT R A < S A N J AY @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M > n P H O T O : S H U T T E R S T O C K

T

he global enterprise market is going through a phase where they are looking at virtualization, cloud computing, social and mobile applications, to make their operations smoother and better, to enhance productivity of the employees, to yield better returns on investment (RoI) and to make their year on year growth a good double digit. This dynamic shift in the enterprise behavior has changed every technology in and around the organization. The way they were computing, the way they were taking back up of data and the way the documents were produced and shared, everything has changed. And the technology has evolved to adapt to the changes.

Often times we have seen that organizations ignore the importance of printing solutions.

But the fact is that its importance is far greater than some of the other enterprise technologies.

Printing solutions is something which makes the organizations to take the first step towards winning any project or programme. Right fomat documentation is the biggest aspect of the success

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or failure of any project. Plus, within an organization, the documents printing guzzles a good portion of budget of the organization. One can say that digitization of documents has replaced the printing documents but instead the printing of documents in the enterprises is growing a higher single digit globally; so also in the Middle East and Africa.

Today, the trend in the market is that – particularly in the Middle East and Africa region – enterprises are turning to adopting document management services (DMS) and managed print services (MPS), but at the same time the market for printers is also growing. This trend is not unusual though but ideally spectacle should be more MPS or DMS in the enterprises than the products. Let us find out what is the real situation in the market.

Brother International believes that the growth in the demand for Managed Print Services mainly comes from large enterprises and this does not constitute a major portion of the printing market.

Soichi Murakami, Managing Director, Brother

International (Gulf) FZE, says, “This concept is now evolving into Managed Content Services, where the Service Provider has to provide not only the printing devices, but also the Document Management System along with devices such as PC’s for document creation and storage devices for archiving and retrieval. Basically, this is a shift from CAPEX to OPEX with the Service Provider investing in the capital expenditure on all the resources.”

Simon Howells, MPS Manager, Global Document Outsourcing - Xerox MEA, says, “Trends affecting office printing are mostly about mobility and ease for users of accessing data and print facilities as well as Managed Print Services – all these are driving overall organisational behaviour.

Vendors are reacting to this, but Xerox has always been at the forefront of the market and is recognised by industry analysts as having the widest portfolio of print/document management hardware and software and related services.

(Quorcira/Gartner).”

He adds, “Other trends being seen are the simple but continuing adoption of colour printing

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COVER STORY

IDC PREDICTS THAT THE SHIPMENTS OF PRINTERS ARE TO GROW 6-8% OVER THE NEXT TWO YEARS AND PIRA PREDICTS THAT TOTAL PRINTING REVENUES IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA (MENA) ARE FORECAST TO GROW 7.2% PER ANNUM REACHING $26 BILLION BY 2018.

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COVER STORY

SIMON HOWELLS, MPS MANAGER, GLOBAL DOCUMENT OUTSOURCING - XEROX MEA,

“The Xerox Personalised Application Builder which along with an SDK allows partners and channels to create specific solutions for their customers.” in the office and the need to control costs of that offer.”

However, in the SOHO sector adoption of multifunction devices is happening at the cost of single function. These devices now come configured with WiFi and the ability to print from smart phones and tablets, whilst offering competitive costs.

Security also remains a key concern for large organisations and small businesses.

All of these trends are addressed in the new Xerox range of device controllers – ConnectKey, giving a common experience and the ability for customisation by VARs and resellers to offer further value to users.

Katsuhisa Asari, General Manager, Konica Minolta, says, “These days, corporate executives are demanding a lot more from their IT departments, and don’t just stop there. After the worldwide economic crisis that had its beginnings in 2008, corporate focus has shifted from the initial cost cutting and ensuring short-term profitability to a long-term focus on positioning and investing for growth. Consequently, the cost, expenditure and performance of the entire company as well as individual departments – and here in particular IT – are being assessed and

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KATSUHISA ASARI, GENERAL MANAGER, KONICAMINOLTA .

“Our partners understand the significance of OPS and invest in the Change Management and business approach aligned with Konica Minolta Strategy.”

SOICHI MURAKAMI, MANAGING DIRECTOR, BROTHER INTERNATIONAL (GULF) FZE

“Some of Brother Printers also come with software including BR Admin and Network Management software that allows the network administrator to monitor the devices."

ANOTHER ASTOUNDING FACT ABOUT THE GROWTH OF MPS IN THE REGION IS THAT; IT HAS GROWN OVER 33% DURING 2012 TO 2014, WHICH IS THE LARGEST GROWTH FROM ALL THE REGIONS.

questioned more closely than ever.”

“At the same time, business technologies are undergoing extreme technological changes.

Computing has been transformed and the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is being newly defined by high-impact innovations – keywords are cloud, apps, mobility, outsourcing, etc. These trends are shaping our working environments in a fundamental way,” he added “Therefore, The market is changing from a product base into value base; customers are now looking beyond printers and looking more at the services being offered and the value, along with the printers that are being provided to the end user. Having said that, services and solutions will be the deciding factor of which brands to work with. Services such as outsourcing, maximum availability up time, effectiveness of response to

service call out and mechanism of tracking and enhancing proactively.”

So the trend around service oriented market has not actually stopped printer shipment growth in the Middle East and Africa region. IDC predicts that the shipments of printers are to grow 6-8% over the next two years and PIRA predicts that total printing revenues in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are forecast to grow 7.2% per annum reaching $26 billion by 2018.

At the same time, MPS is growing at around 10% across the region. Another astounding fact about the growth of MPS in the region is that; it has grown over 33% during 2012 to 2014, which is the largest growth from all the regions. Not only that from 2011 to 2015, the market is estimated to see a CAGR growth of 15% making it the highest growing region compared to other region in the

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COVER STORY

world, whereas Eastern Europe is growing at 12% followed by APAC including Japan at the rate of 10% during the same period.

The indications are pretty clear that enterprises in this region are very clever and want to concentrate on their business growth than struggle on a day to day basis with various technologies - managing and maintaining those. Therefore, the vendors and their ecosystem partners should approach the customers with a mindset which allows them to discuss about with the printing solutions than the features of the products. So understanding the customers’ requirement is always a priority before proposing them a solution. Katsuhisa of KonicaMinolta says, “First of all, you must need to understand what the company is spending on printing every month and tracking where it is being spent. End user questionnaires should be tailored and measured accordingly, in order to project a tailor made solution for their respective organizations." l Capture: - Software based identification of existing printers, precise monitoring of current utilization patterns and printing volumes: User interviews to detect specific document workflows, individual needs and service level demands. l Manage: - Proactive service, remote and onsite automatic delivery of consumables and replacement parts. l Monitor: - continuous supervision of all networked and locally attached devices to monitor the machines’ utilization, status and alerts. l Improve: - Regular management reports, review meetings, and active searches for further improvements.

By knowing the customer’s requirements and every component of the above, you will have a better understanding of the end users’ needs and have visibility of the customers printing environment.

Simon of Xerox says, “We recommend differently to different clients, which is always based on the client’s drivers for the project coupled with findings from the assessment. Xerox always requests that the assessment is given the right amount of time to be done properly, as the recommendations will be reflected within the contract and both parties need to move forward with confidence.”

“To reach this position, Xerox conducts a benchmark assessment looking not only at the volumetric data, but also the client feedback, security and processes involved. All this data is then mined by experienced analysts using Newfield IT software to produce the current state assessment details which, in turn, will lead to the client recommendations within the future state, he added.

In the past few years, the office technology business has continued to evolve to encompass all solutions and services that focus on documents.

This includes print and production print as well as content management, workflow, mobile, social and the cloud. Over the next few years, customers will continue to seek out providers that can deliver the solutions and services required to meet all of their document needs, and we would like to be on the cutting edge of that need.

In this situation, Konica Minolta sees a lot of growth opportunities in 2014 by its strategy of transforming from a hardware-only provider to a provider of solutions and services. The company offers a range of software and applications that address the digitization and storage of content, secure release print, to create awareness about the cost of printing, and workflow design to eliminate the need for printed documents. The bizhub Marketplace apps play a strategic role as part of this strategy helping customers manage their print while making businesses more efficient.

Similarly, Xerox looks to the future with its range of printing solutions which leverages its ConnectKey controller technology. This puts the ability to customise and integrate existing workflow and systems into the hands of channel partners who are best positioned to offer a superior value add. The focus is on cost control, variable printing, access control and mobility as well as tie-ins with McAfee, Sharepoint and Xerox Mobile Print offerings.

Brother International on the other hand banks upon its product strategy. Soichi believes that no vendor is in a position to directly provide Managed Print Services to end users. Such services can only be provided by a Systems Integrator who is able to source large format printers, MFP’s in Color Laser, Mono Laser, PC’s, Hubs, Routers and Document Management Software from more than one vendor.

“Currently, this remains quite a challenge as all Service Providers do not have relationships with vendors for all formats and technologies for Printing etc. Due to the manner in which the market is structured, servicing of such a wide variety of devices is also very difficult,” he added.

So in that content, some of Brother Printers also come with software including BR Admin and Network Management software that allows the network administrator to monitor the devices from one networked PC. Even though uptake of the services market is quite strong in the region but there is a lot of space for the growth. And the channel partners are the people who can make the real change.

These are the people who are the first point of contact for the enterprises. If they are given the

right kind of knowledge they can be true catalyst in transforming the business. In that process they can upsell better products, solutions and even services. Till date the pricing and spec to spec comparison has been the customer win formula for most of the partners, which needs to be changed and only the vendors can drive it. Not only should they be trained regularly but also be enabled to create customized applications in order to bring more revenue and more involvement.

Simon maintains, “Xerox ensures that all software, hardware and services capabilities are available to channel partners. The Xerox Personalised Application Builder which along with an SDK allows partners and channels to create specific solutions for their customers. This value-add allows for enhanced profit opportunities as well as better ‘stickiness’ with customers which again allows for superior returns.”

Konica Minolta, under its Optimized Print Services program, creates the opportunity for the partners to create customized services for their customers. Katsuhisa adds, “Our partners understand the significance of OPS and invest in the change management and business approach aligned with Konica Minolta Strategy.”

From the market stand point, oil and gas, government and BFSI sectors are well ahead of the curve in adoption of the services. However, there have been over a hundred contracts signed across the region by Xerox partners for MPS in the last 12 months and this growth activity is expected to continue for the balance of 2014 and beyond. Xerox has completed projects across all industry sectors and regions. These include - but aren’t limited to - American University of Kuwait, Emirates NBD in Egypt and Seidco in the UAE. Konica Minolta started to work and support its partners to deliver an MPS strategy approximately two years ago. The company has been very successful in the education sector in Saudi Arabia and has various projects implemented across the country. The company has also positive results in the banking and the education market in Oman, plus the oil and gas sectors in the UAE. Qatar has also seen a success in the medium size corporate companies for Konica Minolta.

FINALLY… Today, when the enterprises see decreased bottom line and struggle to retain their customers, the tools that enable them including computing, storage and communications, etc. as a service is not a secret recipe. So if you still think that print as a service and document delivery as a service is not going to rule the market is a big mistake. ë

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is important. So our customers’ base goes from having 20 devices to well an excess of 130,000 devices as a single instance. Single console manages all of those devices multi-nationally. This gives the real differentiation. The multi-tenanted approach is very important.

We also understand the needs of privacy. So we do not host anything that has any personal data.

We do not put anything on Network Operating Centre to rout anything to our data centre. We enable the device to securely connect to the infrastructure directly and if required put an application device or an application or data-level tunnel.

From the enterprise mobility perspective, AirWatch solutions have been developed from ground up. All the IP are owned by AirWatch.

The benefit is that the solutions are compact and do not require additional tweaking in order to gel with other solutions available from the company. Commercially, it is very important as the customers deal with one vendor.

IAN EVANS

VICE PRESIDENT AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, EMEA, AIRWATCH

“Our Strategy is to Maintain Leadership” EVEN THOUGH AIRWATCH DOES NOT HAVE OFFICE IN THE MEA REGION THE COMPANY IS ABLE TO LOCK HORNS WITH OTHER MDM SOLUTIONS VENDORS

What is your strategy for this year?

Our strategy is to maintain leadership in the enterprise mobility. You will see more products coming in from our portfolio this year. Our second strategy is to look at, as it makes sense, to integrate VMware and AirWatch.

Mobility is a highly agile space. We make six releases of products every year because the market requires the products to be current.

OEMs make a lot of product releases each year and we have to maintain the same pace.

IN REGION AND BAG CUSTOMERS. IAN EVANS, VICE PRESIDENT AND MANAGING DIRECTOR, EMEA SPEAKS ABOUT IT IN LENGTH. EXCERPTS...

Why don’t you have your own office in this region?

You cannot cover more than one country at a time because there are taxation issues, property issues and employment issues and a host of other issues as well. Despite that we have been able to do business in 26-28 countries in the first two years of our existence. We have done everything from one office. What we do is that we hire people from every country that we operate in for UK office. And, these people bring local cultural experience to our organization, which enhances our understanding of those countries, in turn, that makes our selling into those territories easier.

What is your distribution strategy, is it all indirect or a mix of direct or indirect?

Initially, when we started our business, we worked with a couple of customers directly but after that business is all through channel partners.

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We do not have distributors at all. It is a one tier reseller model.

How many customers you have globally and in Dubai as well?

We have 13, 000 - 14, 000 customers globally.

We have good customers’ presence locally as well – some of the important customers include Jumeirah Group, Atlantis Hotel, Emaar Properties, Dewa, DPP, Emirates Airlines and Fly Dubai.

What is the real differentiator of AirWatch Solutions?

We are a flexible organization which is driven by only customers’ needs. We do not create solutions in our R&D department, which do not have real-life use cases. We are also the most scalable multi-tenanted solution provider in the market place by now. We have got more customers in excess of 30, 000 devices than any of the customers of our competitors. Scale up and scale down

What is your outlook for the market in this region?

UAE is ahead in the GCC region. Dubai is at the technology pinnacle of GCC and we have got 45-50 customers here now with big deployments.

And you will see good deployments coming up towards the end of this year. Post Gitex show 2014, we will see reinvigorated display of technology deployment in this region. I think 2015 is going to be very good mobility year in UAE. We are working very closely with the government agencies here to provide smart bit of technology.

A lot of BYOD projects are coming up in UAE. We are going to come every month here in the first quarter making sure that work happen property.

What kind of marketing investment you have for this region?

We are probably investing more here than any other region that we are focusing on. We are sponsoring a lot of events, media and Google Ad Words. Plus we are investing on local communications tools to enable our customers to be in touch with us. ë

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ENTERPRISE SECURITY

HP SECURITY

Thriving on Channel Strength HP might be known for its printers and PCs but it has a strong portfolio of Enterprise Security solutions comprising Frotify, TippingPoint, ArcSight and Atalla.  B Y: T U S H A R S A H O O < T U S H A R @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

H

aving acquired some of the well known security brands in the past, HP is able to create a strong portfolio of enterprise security solutions today, which offers three major solutions i.e. application security, network security and solution for security intelligence and event management (SIEM).

For application security, the product is Fortify, which assesses and quantifies the software security risk, identifies vulnerabilities, prioritizes them by risk and provides line by line code detail to fix. Plus, it also monitors high-risk applications while they run.

For network security the product is TippingPoint, which has next-gen IPS, next-gen Firewall, Digital Vaccine Labs (DVLABS) and Security Management Systems.

Digital Vaccine Labs (DVLABS) comprises a team of HP security experts that develop cuttingedge filters that cover an entire vulnerability—not just an exploit, and provide automatic weekly updates keeping you ahead of the latest threats.

Security Management Systems is an appliance that gives global vision and security policy control for your large-scale deployments of all HP TippingPoint products, including the HP TippingPoint Next Generation Intrusion Prevention Systems (NGIPS), Core Controllers and SSL appliances.

HP ArcSight is for security Information and event management, which offers Security and Log Management, defends applications and data against threats and provides Log reports on a single dashboard.

Plus, HP Atalla is an Encryption and Key Management solution for banking sector to safeguard their payments & data.

Even if these solutions are highly sophisticated, HP does not shy away from adopting a two tier partner strategy (distribution and channel) as far as its go to market is concerned.

Neeti Rodrigues, Regional Director, HP Enterprise Security, says, “Distribution partners are for logistics support and channel partners are for customer contact. HP always prefers to do business through channel partners, who always add value. They are basically extension of HP. They are the people who understand our security portfolio. They offer sales and technical pre-sales resources and do POC for us.”

People know HP for its printer business but when it comes to its security business, HP does not feature well in the top of the customers’ mind. Neeti added, “It is true that HP is known for printers and servers but at the same time enterprise security remains as a focussed group as well within HP. We work with our focussed group of partners not with the partners who sell printers or PCs” HP always believes in the principle of open architecture. It means a third party architecture can get integrated with HP solutions with ease.

Neeti says, “We do a lot of awareness exercise through our channel partners and through our direct touch model. Customers are the ultimate decision makers who want best of the breed solutions and HP does not create resistance to that.”

HP works with Comgaurd and Redington as its VADs for Middle East market. At the same time, companies like Paladian and Wipro are also

NEETI RODRIGUES REGIONAL DIRECTOR, HP ENTERPRISE SECURITY

“I cannot engage a reseller who is selling printers to go and sell security because the customer will suffer.” engaged as the service partners. Plus, HP engages with a good number of focussed resellers in each of the countries in the region.

HP covers all these partners under its Partner One Programme but with a separate agenda.

It does not allow any partner or every partner to be associated in this business. Reason being that HP Enterprise Security group wants a certain level of quality in the partners to be able to interface with its customers. Neeti maintains, “I cannot engage a reseller who is selling printers to go and sell security because the customer will suffer. So we have certain criteria. The benefits and certifications are also different.”

In order to be HP Enterprise Security reseller, the partner needs to commit two sales and two technical people to be certified on HP technology. And, as they go on scaling up commitment, their benefits also grow. But the fact is that this business arm of HP does not engage more than four partners per country in the Middle East region. Therefore the chance of becoming HP Enterprise Security partner is also slim.

FINALLY...

As HP Enterprise Security business is growing 100% year on year for past two years, it is unlikely that HP would restrict inducting more partners per country. 

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NEHUL GORADIA

VP- CHANEL & ALLIANCES, OPTIMUS

PAUL ABI-CHAHINE REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, EMERGING EMEA, NETIQ

“Supporting Increasing Demand by Local Presence” ENTERPRISES IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA ARE ENHANCING THEIR INVESTMENT ON SECURITY TECHNOLOGY IN ORDER TO KEEP THEM IMMUNE FROM THE SECURITY ATTACKS. ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO PAUL ABI-CHAHINE, REGIONAL SALES DIRECTOR, EMERGING EMEA, NETIQ, MARC BOITEL IR, DIRECTOR OF PROFESSIONAL SERVICES, MIDDLE EAST, NETIQ AND NEHUL GORADIA, VP- CHANEL & ALLIANCES, OPTIMUS TO KNOW ABOUT THEIR STRATEGY.

You seem to have less visibility in this market, what is your strategy?

Paul : NetIQ has been present in the Middle East market for many years now through its channel of partners. As you may know, NetiQ has been focusing on the Identity, Access Management/ Governance & Security market for the last 15 years and with over 9,000 large references worldwide, but also several Enterprise references in the Middle East region. We’ve seen our business growing in Middle East for the last few years and in order to get closer to our customers and expand further our coverage for this region, we have taken the decision to have direct presence by launching our operations in Middle East region and establish a regional office, based in Dubai.

How do you see the growth in this

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market?

Paul : The IT demand is continuously growing in Middle East and many organizations have quickly adopted new technologies. Mobility, BYOD, Cloud are a reality and have been evaluated if not adopted already by many organizations in this region. All this have increased security challenges for CISOs who need in one way to comply with local regulations as well as ensuring security threats are addressed while finally ensuring data is accessible only by the authorized people.

As a distributor how is this market growing?

Nehul: We are a value added distributor with presence across 20 countries. We could see that the adoption of security technology is very much unique to the countries in this region and the

strategy of each country is proportionate to the geo economic situation of that country. There are countries which are at the maturity curve of adoption of technology and they are adopting high end security solutions. There are countries at the basic level of technology adoption and therefore adopting the basic level of security solutions.

We see there is a need for both and adoption of security in the region is quite strong. If you look at the IT spend on security, it is growing year on year. It was single digit until last year but this year, it has growth to double digit.

As far as NetIQ is concerned, we have always tried to bring in best of the breed technology to the market. We have shied away from being just a box-moving distributor but rather tried to be a focused distributor by adding value to our channel and to their customers by bringing in value products, services (such as Technical services, Managed Services, Marketing Support Services, Loyalty programs, etc) and solutions.

Therefore NetIQ fits well into our strategy as it provides value and right ROI to the customers as well as partners. Our partners are focused on specified security expertise and this is what we want to develop in collaboration with vendors like NetIQ. What about your services strategy?

Marc : NetIQ has a clear model acting through specialized partners to deliver the best solution to the end-users. Identity management and connected security matters like Access Management, SSO, SIEM or even Governance are complex and many projects are failing.

This is happening due to several reasons. Three important factors can be identified: the quality of some products (intrusive or not , real time or not ) , the experience / expertise of the consultants and the project methodology. In many cases, the projects are failing due to not being driven in proper way. This is why on top of the services delivered by our local partners we decided to bring to the region the expertise collected in USA and Europe during the last 15 years. A local technical team is there to drive and assist our partners not only during the evaluation phase but also during the complete delivery of the projects. Nehul: We, at Optimus, train and enable the partners on sales & presales capabilities. We see ourselves as an extension of NetIQ’s channel team. So we create joint plans in terms of marketing strategy, enablement strategy, sales strategy, etc. We do not have 100s of partners rather focused select partners. We understand their value proposition and enable them so that they can go and service their customers. ë

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windows file, SharePoint, open text and all that without data replication. We have a direct connector which connects virtually to any device.

Another advantage of this solution is that it has been designed with a mobile user environment.

So, our entire user interface looks like a mobile app no matter on which platform you are on.

Also, from an end-user perspective, the key advantage is the ease of use. If you know how to use a mobile app, you can use our solution.

The third element is that we have an architecture that allows a number of different deployment options. Most of our competitors offer solutions in the public cloud only and we are one of the very few companies that have private cloud deployment options. So, you can deploy our solutions in your own network so that you are in full control of your data.

From which all verticals do you have customers?

Since, we have more of a horizontal application; it is pretty much across all verticals. One vertical which stands out is government. Also, the traditional companies which have large and many files find our solutions very useful.

PAUL STEINER

MD, EMEA, ACCELLION

“Proud of our High Retention Rate” IN A MOBILE WORKFORCE ENVIRONMENT, SOLUTIONS WHICH ARE AVAILABLE ON THE MOVE WITH THE EASE OF USE ARE DEFINITELY HANDY.

How cost-effective are these solutions?

We have an annual subscription model. The annual fee includes the license and the annual support fee.

What is your Go-to-Market strategy?

In this region, we are working predominantly with Bulwark Technologies. We like to have a handful of good partners rather than having many mediocre partners. We are trying to develop the relationship with Bulwark and nurture the partner network so that we have a strong base in the region.

ACCELLION NOT ONLY HAS THE RELEVANT PRODUCT BUT ALSO ENJOYS THE CUSTOMERS’ TRUST. PAUL STEINER EXPLAINED THEIR STRATEGY.

Give us an overview of your company?

We are based in California and head-quartered in Palo Alto. Our main product is next generation mobile file sharing and collaboration platform called kiteworks. We have over 2,000 large enterprise customers around the globe. In this region, our largest customer is Saudi Aramco. We are very proud of our high retention rates. More than 96% of our customers stay with us and I think that speaks for the product itself. kiteworks allows users to access, share, create, edit docu-

ments from any source and from everywhere.

How secure are your solutions in the times when BYOD trend is gaining traction?

When you talk about mobile file sharing, it is accessing corporate data and security is becoming a key issue. In BYOD, it’s all about securing these devices and we have an absolute secure solution. The solution we have allows you to access your enterprise content management system as well. So, we have direct access to

How has been the partnership with Bulwark?

We met them two years ago, the chemistry was right. We had worked before with a number of partners in the region and that didn’t work out.

Bulwark is very well-trained technically and can sell the products with a good network of partners in the region. So, we are quite happy with Bulwark.

What kind of growth are you expecting from this region?

Mobile IT is the largest growing segment in the IT world right now. We usually have double-digit growth above 50% and we hope to maintain that. ë

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NASSER EL ABDOULI

CHANNEL SALES MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST, F5 NETWORKS

“SDN Will Define Who is Going to Survive Another 10 Years” F5 PRIDES ITSELF IN BEING PRUDENT AS FAR AS APPLICATION SECURITY IS CONCERNED AND IN TURN BEING AHEAD IN THE RACE WITH OTHER VENDORS. FOR THIS YEAR, THE COMPANY INTENDS TO FOCUS ON SDN. MANALI MISRA OF ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO NASSER EL ABDOULI, CHANNEL SALES MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST, F5 NETWORKS TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY’S PLAN IN THE REGION.

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Give us an update of what F5 is doing in this region?

We are basically helping our customers build the infrastructure to get them to the next century.

We mostly sell in the enterprise, government, private, service providers, banking all kind of verticals. Anybody who has a data infrastructure can get a lot of benefits from what we do. We basically allow them to centralize multiple services that are absolutely critical for them in central point of control and from there they get the power, efficiency, control, and the management of all those services. F5 has been so successful because customers who are testing it are basically building their IT strategy around our technologies. This is very important to understand because where we sit in the data centre, we see all the traffic and that puts us in a

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very privileged position to add on-going services for customers around security, management, mobility, virtualization etc.

Our CEO usually talks about service delivery platform because the most advanced customers are even offering IT services internally to different departments and the most advanced and the smartest customers are not considering IT as a cost centre but as a profit centre. If you take any of our platforms, it has more than 350 features.

What makes you different from your competitors?

F5 has a very strong history in this market. We come from a networking background. When we were doing networking load balancing, we had some strong arguments, the power, the performance of our equipments etc. and we kept fighting and creating our space in this market.

Because of a very advanced technology and strong investment that we have always been making in R&D, strong financial ability of the company, right and strategic choices made by our executives, we created our space in this market.

Over the years, we have created a very strong focus in the application layer where our networking competitors from that time were still very strong in networking. We became probably the only company which was comfortable bridging those two worlds together. That’s the strength we have in the market and the history of IT has given us a true recognition.

If you look at the past couple of years, companies like Juniper have disappeared from this market. They have abandoned their DX platform saying in a diplomatic way that they prefer to focus on their energy and R&D in the core business which meant the pace of the market and demand of the customers was going through application layer and they couldn’t sustain anymore developing features in this area. We kept investing in that area.

Since, a couple of years now, security has become very important concern and security on application has become the centre of those concerns. 90% of the threats are targeting application layer.

We position in the centre of the data centre.

We have the performance and the intelligence, we understand the application. This puts us in a fantastic position to develop application security solutions for our customers. I am describing what the scenario is today but our executives had foreseen the scenario long ago up to the point that today without even activating any security feature by default, customers who are using us

for network features, they already get applications security. We have a very strong DDoS platform. Some of the customers are putting F5 equipments in front of their firewalls because their firewall cannot handle the amount of traffic they would have to handle.

Do you have R&D centre in MEA? Our R&D centres are across the globe. We have the main one in the US where the company has been founded. Throughout the acquisitions, we have made, we have other pockets of R&D. We do not have any R&D centre in the Middle East. However, ME is extremely visible to our company up to the CEO level. Some of our customers in ME have a direct relationship with our C-level executives in the US. This region is of great priority. We have multiplied our team by more than three over the past couple of years. We were one of the first IT vendors who really established a physical presence with an office in Dubai. We have our regional HQ in Dubai where we manage the operations of more than 14 countries. We have another office in Saudi Arabia, we manage all our Saudi operation from there which are close to 40% of our revenue.

We do that through a network of partners. The channel strategy is to expand to as many partners as possible. If tomorrow we have 6,000 partners in the region, we would be happy. There is no limit. By partners I mean the companies which have the trust of their customers anywhere in the region even in the smallest of the province in Libya, Yemen or anywhere. We tell them, we are here with our distributors, we can help you help your customers with our fantastic technology and help you build your own skills etc. We make sure that those companies when they need that, they know how to reach us.

The other part is to be proactive. We have a team to reach out to our customers and build a real partnership. We have three sides partnership with our customers, partners and ourselves.

What is your focus for this year in the region?

We have made very important announcements in the region around SDN. Many large vendors are putting a lot of attention in this area. It is basically going to define who is going to survive another ten years. We are switching from a mindset where companies were driven by launch of new application and every time they went through the

“WE POSITION IN THE CENTRE OF THE DATA CENTRE. THIS PUTS US IN A FANTASTIC POSITION TO DEVELOP APPLICATION SECURITY SOLUTIONS FOR OUR CUSTOMERS.”

How is you channel ecosystem aligned?

Being a channel-oriented company, we have built a strategy of penetration. We have a network of distributors and value-added resellers. We have three distributors who themselves have presence in almost all the countries of the region. With their teams we are occupying the ground almost everywhere. Our Partner Program is called Unity.

In the Middle East, we work with Secureway (Exclusive Networks), Computerlinks (acquired

by Arrow) and Westcon. We have a dual strategy for our partners..

The first side is we are targeting every possible customer. Every requirement in the region that F5 can address in the region, we want to address that. We want to make sure that the customers can reach us. We decided to be a channel company because we cannot be everywhere.

launch they had to go through the same process: what security level, what encryption etc. Customers have thousands of applications now with thousands of devices. It is absolutely unrealistic to think that we can put out the same layer of security in all these applications. Hence, innovative technologies like ours and SDN solutions like ours which is called SDaaS (Software Defined as a Service). We tell them what if you define a basic stack of security, authentication, services or whatever you want to push in all your applications and whenever a new application comes up you push this stack and force your users to go through your policy, wouldn’t it be a better and optimised control? This is the priority of this year to launch that and explain it to customers, partners and technology and alliance partners. Then may be next year, we will start making it a reality and build the skills in our channel network. ë

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HANI NOFAL

DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENT NETWORK SOLUTIONS, GBM

“Excellence in Customer Services and Satisfaction” IT’S NOT ONLY ABOUT THE PRODUCTS OR TECHNOLOGY BUT IT IS ALSO ABOUT THE APPROACH, SERVICES AND ADVICE ON HOW YOU PRIORITISE YOUR BUDGETS AND HOW TO STAY ALWAYS AHEAD OF THE GAME. IT IS RELATIVELY EASIER TO BUY A PRODUCT BUT NOT QUITE OBVIOUS SOMETIMES WHICH SOLUTION IS NEEDED MORE. THIS IS WHERE GBM BELIEVES IS CRUCIAL TO HELP THE CUSTOMERS. MANALI MISRA OF ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO HANI NOFAL, DIRECTOR OF INTELLIGENT NETWORK SOLUTIONS, GBM TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY.

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Give us an update on what GBM is doing in this region?

Gulf Business Machines (GBM) has been around for 25 years now and is one of the largest IT Solutions provider with very intimate relationship with IBM and strategic relationships with the key suppliers in the region with the likes of Cisco. I joined around two and a half years ago and I am responsible for networking and security business for GBM in the region.

We have reshaped our attention and focus around this business two and a half years ago and again refocused our attention on cyber security in particular. For a company of our size and experience in the region, we have two opportunities. The first one is we understand the region extremely well as we come from the region. We have been long enough to see all the evolution of

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industry trends and dynamics with the region at local flavour.

The second component is that because of the wide range of portfolio that we have from products, solutions and services, we have been doing a lot already when it comes to IT and cyber security. We just needed to reshape. We are confident that we have a holistic approach and message that we are taking to our customers and the market to firstly educate them about the challenges and what we are doing. And also, to take them through the journey how they can tackle the challenges and prioritise their budgets approach to do first things first. In a nutshell, this is what we do around cyber-security.

In which countries do you have presence?

We mainly operate in the Gulf. That’s our footprint. We also have an operation in Pakistan.

We don’t have direct presence anywhere else. We have 7-8 local offices and we are a company with more than 1,200 employees across the region.

We have been known for excellence in customer services and satisfaction. This is what we strive to achieve regardless of what solution we are offering.

Elaborate on your portfolio.

We have a rich portfolio of products and services. When it comes to security, it is a little bit more challenging because of the nature of security industry and the market which is fragmented, as compared to traditional solutions we might have. This is where our value comes as a large solutions provider. We spend a lot of time trying to understand what works and what doesn’t and all the features that we have to put in our solutions before we bring out to the market.

There aren’t many providers when it comes to specific technologies but for security there are so many of them and all claiming to have the best approach and technology. It’s confusing for the market and customers. It is also confusing for us as a solutions provider. We need to qualify and re-qualify again and all the time to ensure that we can put a framework that will allow all these bits and pieces to fit together and that’s the value that we bring to our customers. It’s not only about the products or technology but it is also about the approach, services and advice on how do you prioritise your budgets, how to stay always ahead of the game etc. It is relatively easier to buy a product but not quite obvious sometimes which solution do I need more: do I go after securing my end-points or should I classify this money to go after data classification or DLP. These are some of the types of advices

that we would want to give to our customers depending on their needs.

Do you see a vertical-wise growth for security solutions?

It used to be the case few years ago where banks or financial institutions used to spend more of their budgets on IT security because of the nature of their industry but things are changing. I think the dynamics that we are talking about today whether it is related to the increased number of mobile connected devices in the workplace or related to the impact of social media or cloudbased services, they are driving the industry across all verticals whether you are in retail, government, transportation, manufacturing etc.

You are more dependent on being online and hence more exposed. I believe that also what we have been witnessing recently in terms of drive of the local governments to push their entities to comply with certain industry standards and giving deadlines, that part had been missing from past few years. What we are seeing in Dubai with Information Security Regulations and the deadline by December 2015, there is no way back. You just have to go forward regardless of the industry that you are in. We play a role here by

How many customers do you have across the region?

We have thousands of customers across the region. We are very well-established in the very large enterprise market with focus on financial services and banking which we inherit from IBM obviously. We are very strong in transportation and aviation. We have been doing very well in supporting the government agenda across the region. It would be a very rare incident that a large bank or government organization or any enterprise hasn’t heard of GBM or hasn’t done business with us. We have a good base in SME market as well.

What kind of growth are you expecting in this region?

We have seen very strong growth over the past few years. We continue to grow in double digits and I think this year the expectation is in line with that. We are aspiring to reach higher levels in terms of our profitable revenue growth.

Things are getting more complicated in ICT market with the drive for smarter government, different types of applications, and smarter cities. We are definitely on track to continue to support our countries in the GCC to prepare

“IT WOULD BE A VERY RARE INCIDENT THAT A LARGE BANK OR GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATION OR ANY ENTERPRISE HASN’T HEARD OF GBM OR HASN’T DONE BUSINESS WITH US.”

making sure all these entities understand what is required and then take them through the journey to implement it and most importantly stay up-todate after they implement the solutions.

Who are your partners?

We are a System Integrator, so we partner with international suppliers and vendors. We also have local partners as well that we take depending on the technology and depending on what we are trying to do. When it comes to partnering with vendors and suppliers, besides IBM which is our main strategic partner that we represent, we do have 20 large strategic partners in the region. We have 20-25 strategic partnerships. We have a lot of in-house capabilities that deliver solutions and services. We also have sub-contractors and partners whom we work with to deliver certain aspects of our solution. We are here for the long-term; we always try to work with the best in the industry.

for all these major dynamics that are taking place.

What is the focus for this year?

There are multiple things. One of them is to continue our investment in cyber-security and enrich our approach around that. We will continue to invest in cloud. Later this year, we will be announcing major investments around that domain. We have been really focused around Big data and Data Analytics. I think, they all play together as we have been talking about the increased number of mobile devices and the data which we generate everyday as enterprises and consumers, there is a demand in the region how we get smarter and analyse data. We continue to invest in traditional infrastructure that we continue to build for our customers and it will still be required in our region for years to come. ë

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Levant and Jordan, Oxygen for Saudi, Iraq and Pakistan and Online Distribution in Pakistan. We want to have strong and strategic partners. We are expecting our partners to push the entire Fortinet portfolio because as a portfolio Fortinet is very large. It’s not just FortiGate, UTM and firewall but also DDoS protection, web application firewall, ATP etc. So, we have quite a range of solutions and products. New technologies are also very important and we are going very fast with new technologies.

What are your channel enablement programs?

Training is a key component. Since, last one month, we are providing free online training to every single bronze, silver and gold partner. Partners can take the certification for free on Fortinet products. This is the first-level certification and for higher levels they have to go through class rooms. I think we are unique in the market to provide such training for sales engineers. On top of it, we are also providing sales and presales training for free. We are making sure that our partners evolve to understand our solutions and deliver the message across the market to the customers. This is the reason why we are spending much time with them and to make sure they are growing. As a company for Fortinet, partnership is crucial. It’s a win-win situation. We need partners and vice-versa.

ALAIN PENEL

REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT, MIDDLE EAST, FORTINET

“Training is a Key Component” FORTINET IS INVESTING IN ITS TEAM, PARTNERS AND LAUNCHING NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN THE REGION. THE COMPANY HAS ALSO STARTED FREE ONLINE TRAINING TO ALL OF ITS PARTNERS BE IT GOLD, SILVER,

Elaborate on your plans for Managed Security Services and Security as a Service?

We have some partners called MSSP partners and services providers who may be based on cloud or managed security services. Last year, we signed MSSP contract with du for UAE. We are going forward and announcing new MSSP agreements. For the time being, for this region we have agreements with service providers. In Europe and US, we have this kind of agreements with some of the large Systems Integrators but this is not the case in GCC. This is a very key vertical and we are working with many large service providers.

OR BRONZE.

Give us an update of what Fortinet is doing in the region.

This is a key area for Fortinet. Market is very active and we are growing a lot in this region.

Fortinet is investing in the team on different angles. We are recruiting more sales and presales not only in the UAE but also in Kuwait, Jordan and Saudi. We are putting more and more techni-

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cal resources and support. We have a well-defined partner strategy as to support us we need more partners. We have two-tier model consisting of distributors and VAD. Partners are categorised into Gold, Silver and Bronze. We are extending our bronze partners to tackle the SMB market.

To support us in this strategy we have various VADs like Exclusive Networks for GCC, Saudi,

What is Fortinet’s focus for this year?

We are pushing our products. We are introducing new technologies to the market. Two months ago, we announced FortiSandBox. We will extend our partnerships this year along with our presence. We are focusing more and more on large accounts. On the other side, we are pushing to SMB market through our VAD like Exclusive Networks. ë

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TECHNOLOGY MEDIA PARTNER Logo 1 - white

Logo 2 - black

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V BALASUB-RAMANIAN

MARKETING MANAGER (IT SECURITY SOLUTIONS), MANAGEENGINE

“Products have Broad Coverage with Affordability” IN THE WAKE OF RECENT SECURITY INCIDENTS IN THE REGION, THE ORGANIZATIONS IN MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA WANT TO SHIELD THEMSELVES EVEN MORE. ALSO, THE CHANGES IN PCI DSS 3.0 HAVE OPENED NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR COMPANIES LIKE MANAGEENGINE TO CONTRIBUTE TO IT SECURITY MANAGEMENT. MANALI MISRA OF ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO V BALASUBRAMANIAN, MARKETING MANAGER (IT SECURITY SOLUTIONS), MANAGEENGINE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE COMPANY’S PLAN.

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What are the new trends emerging in IT security management?

In Middle East, IT security until recently was not a focused area. So, organizations were happy in perimeter security systems. The focus is changing now. They have started having more internal controls for cyber threats. Due to recent cyber threat incidents, security has become the focus in this region. Banking and Financial institutions in this region want to have video records of privileged activities. It is one of the trends emerging in this region. They want to have video record for audits unlike the traditional way where it was in form of text especially due to the insider threats. You trust your employees, partners or third party vendors and you grant the privileged access to some of your IT resources based on needs. They also want to check what the person who has been given

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privileged access is doing. For that they want to have video record which we call as session recording. It’s an emerging thing in this region.

What innovations is ManageEngine bringing to the market in terms of technology and products?

Earlier we were having a Password Management Solution that just stored the administrative password of IT resources in a centralised repository. Organizations were storing password in text files, excel sheets and other volatile resources in plain text. We introduced a product called Password Manager Pro which is a centralized password vault where you can put all your administrative passwords and share with the team as and when needed. For example, network administrators will get access only to network related device passwords and not to server passwords. When users wanted audit trails with video records we introduced session monitoring in this software itself. The best part is that it is a single integrated solution. So, you are anyways storing the user name and password of all your IT resources. When you want to view the username or password all you need to do is click there and you will get a direct connection to your IT resource without even copying the username or password. You will get one click access to the remote resource and whatever operations you do thereafter they are video recorded and stored.

So, it is a single integrated solution for password management as well as remote access and then the session recording. This is on-premise solution but we provide a web-interface also.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) 3.0 is coming in January 2015.

That is one important thing for us because all organizations in this region, especially banking, want to be complaint with PCI DSS. PCI DSS 2.0 which is operational till date requires organizations to analyze logs of security devices. PCI DSS 3.0 has gone a step further. PCI DSS 3.0 wants organizations to segregate devices into sensitive and non-sensitive and they want organizations to mandatorily review security sensitive devices logs every day and identify malicious or suspicious activities. The aim is not log analysis but the mandate is to prevent attacks. So, all security devices generate thousands of logs everyday and it is impossible for anyone to manually review them.

We definitely need a log management solution.

We have a product called EventLog Analyzer that helps organizations review logs from various sources and it gives a lot of predefined report.

PCI DSS 3.0 is a very big opportunity for us.

Security Manager Plus is a vulnerability assessment and patch management solution

which also helps generate reports for PCI. PCI 3.0 lays stress on password protection and security. Hence, Password Manager Pro has also a lot to offer for PCI. All these products will generate a lot of focus.

Which all solutions do you have for BYOD platform?

We have desktop management and mobile device management solutions. These help the organizations to take total control of the devices brought by the employees. You can deploy any software into those devices. You can also delete something you want. It gives the complete control on the devices brought by the employees into the corporate network.

What is the differentiating factor for ManageEngine?

All the ManageEngine solutions are highly affordable when compared to competing solutions. We have all the features and the price point is highly affordable. All organizations have security budgets but they can’t afford to spend half a million dollar on password management solution or any other such solutions. That is the major differentiating factor. Another thing is that you get everything from a single window.

ManageEngine has got 24 different products which cater to the entire spectrum of IT manage-

important event. We will be participating in GITEX as well.

What is your channel partner strategy?

In UAE, we operate only through Elitser Technologies LLC. They are our sole distributors. They have got relationship with all the IT organizations here. In other countries across MEA we have multiple partners like in Saudi, we have three partners. The total number of partners will be close to 20 in Middle East & Africa.

We have three different certifications like Gold, Silver and Bronze. We have 24 products and it is difficult to train partners on multiple products. But the more number of products they get trained in, they get the Gold certification. We also organize training programs for partners at a common location in GCC countries. Partners also visit our development centre in India and receive training. It’s an on-going activity.

How are you present in different parts of MEA? We operate only through partners.

How do you customise your products for the local needs?

We do not do any customisation. It is the partner

MANAGEENGINE HAS GOT 24 DIFFERENT PRODUCTS WHICH CATER TO THE ENTIRE SPECTRUM OF IT MANAGEMENT, IT OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT AND IT SECURITY MANAGEMENT.

ment, IT operations management and IT security management.

Out of 90,000 customers across the globe, how many are from MEA? Most likely, it will be close to 5-10%. In the UAE, all the top banks and oil companies, they are our customers. Since, we have 24 different products we are focusing on cross-selling.

What is your GTM for Middle East and Africa?

We market our products mainly through channel partners. We have started participation in trade shows in this region especially for security. We participated in e-Crime where many CIOs and CTOs were also gathered. GISEC is another

who takes care of that like implementation and minor customisation. Whenever, they require our help they get in touch with us but most of the time, they take care.

What is the focus for this year?

In Password manager Pro, we are enhancing session management and session recording. We want to position this product as a full-fledged remote access control solution. In EventLog management, we want to make log collection and analysis 10 times faster. We are integrating EventLog Analyser with Firewall Analyser solution. That integration is going to happen this year. These are some of the activities planned and these will also help compliance management especially PCI. ë

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ENTERPRISE APPS

RED HAT

Leveraging The Cloud Factor

Cloud does solve many IT hassles but managing it in an effective way yields maximum output. n B Y: M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

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fter being just a buzz word, cloud is a reality now for many enterprises. Enterprises are opening up to the cloud but there is still a lot more to be done around after deployment and management of cloud. Red Hat is innovating on different fronts and it has launched the open source version of CloudForms. The software Red Hat acquired from ManageIQ, currently serves as the basis for its open hybrid cloud management product. “Open source cloud management platform has never happened before. We are basically going out in a market which is incredibly crowded. Cloud management platform market has over 50 vendors and comprises mainstream player and we are saying that we will open source this problem and we will build a community around this product that can bring in content and can bring in additional pieces of management model that can add value on top of this,” says Alessandro Perilli, General Manager, Open Hybrid Cloud Program, Red Hat. He says that one of the biggest challenges that organizations have these days is how to address the demand that comes from the line of business.

The line of business experiences what is the new way of IT and the agility that public cloud service providers offer. The corporate IT needs to deal with complex legacy environment and the same time with compliance and regulation along with security. “People who work with public cloud provider have a mindset which is towards the new IT. When you try to bring that concept to the traditional enterprise where you have people who

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FAYCAL SAILE

GENERAL MANAGER, MIDDLE EAST, TURKEY AND AFRICA, RED HAT

“We enable the presales, sales and the delivery community through a set of training courses within our product catalogue.”

come from mainframe era, there is a gap. It’s not about the education; it is about understanding the philosophy behind it. Large enterprises are desperate to understand how to design application with that mind set. All the challenges that traditional IT has slows their capabilities to address the demand of the line of business. The way they go about it increases the budget every year,” he adds. The large enterprise customers can’t behave exactly the same as a public cloud provider. So, there must be a set of technologies that you can put on top of your existing IT and Red Hat offers those. “So, we are bringing innovations in different areas and one of them certainly is cloud enablement. In our offering we don’t only have Red Hat enterprise virtualization but we also have our open stack solution which is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) enablement and through OpenShift we have Platform -as-aService (PaaS). These two represent innovation because they are the foundation of scaling out your application. The moment the enterprises get ready to re-engineer their applications to scale out rather than scale up, they would need to rely on reliable, certified, supportive IaaS or PaaS and we offer that edge, says Perilli.

As far the Middle East market is concerned, Faycal Saile, General Manager, Middle East, Turkey and Africa, Red Hat says that there has been a huge demand to build a private cloud within the data centre of the organizations. “This is an evolution as earlier they had a traditional IT, then virtualization and the next step is private cloud. Now, we have seen few organizations shifting the workload to the public cloud but they

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ENTERPRISE APPS

ALESSANDRO PERILLI

GENERAL MANAGER, OPEN HYBRID CLOUD PROGRAM, RED HAT

don’t have a solution of managing to get a unified view of IT between the different workload. They use the tools from the public provider who is outside the country and they try to get control of the environment. Today, they are missing this and they see Red Hat with our Cloud Management Platform as a solution to tackle this missing gap,” Saile adds.

Red Hat’s business is 100% through partners in the region. It is announcing Program.30 for its partners where it has introduced clear specialization of partners and one of the specializations is a cloud speciality within this program to enable the partners to position and sell its cloud offering.

“We enable the pre-sales, sales and the delivery community through a set of training courses within our product catalogue. We enable the

full staff and team of partners to be independent enough from Red Hat to position our products in the market,” says Saile.

He says that apart from innovation, Red Hat is different from traditional open source vendors as it has no locking which the customers appreciate and can be integrated with third party solutions.

FINALLY...

Red Hat’s stronghold is in public sector, finance, telecom, and airline. “We will continue on these. The second area of focus is geographical footprint. We are now in the UAE and looking at other areas in the Middle East. The third element is cloud which is one of the growth areas,” Saile concludes. ë

“The moment the enterprises get ready to re-engineer their applications to scale out rather than scale up, they would need to rely on reliable, certified, supportive IaaS or PaaS and we offer that edge.”

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SAFWAT ALSHAWAF

TERRITORY MANAGER, SAUDI ARABIA AT INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE

“Cloud Could Be a Potential Industry in the Future” INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE, A GLOBAL PROVIDER OF CONTACT CENTRE, UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS, AND BUSINESS PROCESS AUTOMATION SOFTWARE AND SERVICES, HAS BEEN SUCCESSFUL IN NORTH AMERICAN MARKET WITH ITS CLOUD-BASED SOLUTIONS FOR COMMUNICATIONS. IT IS TRYING TO POPULARISE THE SAME IN MEA WHERE THE COMPANY SEES A HUGE POTENTIAL FOR CALL CENTRES AND IVR. MANALI MISRA OF ENTERPRISE CHANNELS MEA SPOKE TO SAFWAT ALSHAWAF, TERRITORY MANAGER, SAUDI ARABIA AT INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE.

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How is the MEA market responding to cloud solutions for communication?

As a company, Interactive Intelligence started offering solutions as a cloud service for a couple of years. We have been very successful in North America, particularly in the US and Europe. For this region, it is picking up but we haven’t reached the stage of maturity for cloud-based solutions like it in Europe or North America. Customers do talk about it, they like to know more about it but they are still hesitant. However, at the moment we are working with several channel partners who are telecos and service providers at the same time.

They are building up their cloud services. Two of the largest telecom operators in Saudi have cloud data centres. Both have the focus of building their call-centre within the cloud. They are selling Infrastructure as a Service and Call Centre as a Service. We are seeing a lot of potential in the market especially for call centres and IVR. It is not restricted to large enterprises. Now, we are seeing smaller companies asking for call-centre solutions.

How is Interactive Intelligence promoting its cloud-based offerings?

We are trying to show the success that the company has in other parts of the world. When the solutions are on cloud, people look at the reliability of the solutions and security. Interactive Intelligence has built both. We also have various deployment models where we can keep the data and the audio at the customer site. It doesn’t have to be stored in our data centre. So, the customers are happy about this and are less worried.

Elaborate on your latest product offering: Pure Cloud.

We launched Pure Cloud during Interactions 2014. It is a different and new kind of cloud solution. Now, we are selling our cloud solutions in two different flavours. Pure Cloud is more of a distributed cloud architecture and we are utilising Amazon Web Services to provide an easier reach for customers to the data centres.

The customers would only need an edge device at their premise and they can pull the configuration from Pure Cloud so that they can pretty much set up a call centre very quickly. Since, it is a distributed architecture, they are connected to multiple data centres. We have completely built a new platform. We have started selling this in the US and it will take a year to come to this region. We are trying to leverage and take the same features that we have built in our CIC applications and put it on our Pure Cloud offering.

Elaborate on your channel ecosystem.

In this part of the world, our strategy is to sell through channel partners. We are continuously looking to have the right partners who have knowledge and experience in the call centre industry. Partners who have solid team for delivery and can ensure customer satisfaction and to make sure that they have the best level of support. We have hired new partners who have large presence and wide reach within the market.

We have partners in Emirates, Oman, Kuwait, Turkey, and North Africa. In Saudi, we have more than seven partners.

What are your channel empowerment programmes?

We have several programmes to empower our channel. We hold workshops and trainings with our partners from a sales perspective. We try to give them an update on our products so that the right message goes to the customers. We assess and evaluate the partner performance every year.

From which verticals do you have the customers?

We have good amount of customers from public sector, banking, insurance, retail, and BPO

What are the opportunities and challenges in this market?

We have done our market analysis and cloud could be a potential industry in the future but we still haven’t seen the amount of business that would just decide building our own data centres in the region. At the moment, we can sell our cloud based solutions but from data centres running from Germany, UK etc. The challenge is when the customer says that we don’t have a data centre here and they feel connected to a data centre in Dubai or Riyadh. To address this, what we have done is we are trying to utilize our existing channel network who are already in that space such as the telecom providers who already have their cloud story and we can provide them the technology and they can run our solutions in a similar model that we are selling it to our customers from our data centres.

How are you present in the region?

We have an office in Dubai which supports the customers and partners for the entire Middle East region. We have one in Riyadh to support the Saudi market as Saudi is a large market.

Are you planning for expansion?

If the company plans for expansion, I would say

“WHEN THE SOLUTIONS ARE ON CLOUD, PEOPLE LOOK AT THE RELIABILITY OF THE SOLUTIONS AND SECURITY, INTERACTIVE INTELLIGENCE HAS BUILT BOTH.”

outsourcing providers.

How is Interactive Intelligence different from its competitors?

If we look at the history of Interactive Intelligence, it is one of the fastest growing software communications companies. Our growth rate globally is between 20-25 %. We are definitely growing at a higher rate than any of our competitors. It’s way above average. Last year, we achieve 31% growth as a company. We are financially stable. We are adding 300 more employees at our HQ i.e. Indianapolis. From the technology perspective, we believe, we have a unique approach. The way we have built out solutions is different from others. It’s an all-in-one platform which covers pretty much everything the customer wants from communication perspective.

the next office would be in Turkey. Turkey is a large market for Interactive Intelligence. We have around 70-80 customers alone in Turkey. Today, we are driving the business through channel and we will keep on driving the business through channel but we are planning to have a local presence there.

In MEA, which region gives you the maximum revenue?

Turkey gives us the maximum revenue. After that, Saudi is at the second position. In Saudi, now we have more than 34 customers. We are seeing huge demand for call centres and IVR in Saudi Arabia.

How much growth are you expecting?

In Saudi, we expect a growth of 25-40% as compared to last year. ë

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PARTNER STREET

SPECTRAMI

Being Niche & Specialised Spectrami has always been known for the niche and specialized technologies it offers and the company has been successful with its unique model of distribution

ANAND CHOUDHA

MD, SPECTRAMI

n B Y: M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

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ince the time of its inception, Spectrami has strived to be a player with niche and specialised technologies. It might have been difficult in the beginning but today, the value added distributor has carved out its own space. To support its growing business in the region, Spectrami has also opened a new office in Dubai which serves as a HQ covering UAE, KSA and South Africa. “The reason we have invested in this office is that we are growing fast and we wanted to bring a better value proposition to our partners because the Customer Experience Centre and the training facility we have built here is amazing. You won’t find this kind of facilities in this region as far as distributors are concerned,” says Anand Choudha, MD at Spectrami.

The company had also opened an office in South Africa this year and Choudha says it has witnessed a great response. “We see very good business coming out of that market this year. It’s a strong potential market for us where we see a strong growth for a couple of years,” he adds.

He says that Spectrami wanted to be the first to bring niche technologies to the region. “We wanted to be different and when you have that kind of vision in your business model you have to ensure you have to act like a vendor. We call our model as a vendor-extension model where in we ensure that we do every activity that a vendor would do if he had the full-fledged presence in

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the region,” he explains. It not only talks about the sales aspect, high-touch model with the customers or channel enablement but also having and ensuring there is a strong technical skill sets available in the region that includes pre-sales and post-sales services as well along with marketing.

“That’s how we work and we have been very successful because we evangelise a lot with our customers to ensure that initially the technologies are accepted while the channel build the confidence in those,” he elaborates.

Spectrami is a 100% channel focused company.

It engages with customers but doesn’t transact with them and that’s the trust it has from its major System Integrators. Channel is very important pillar of the model which the company follows.

“It’s the way we can sustain and grow our business in the future. Our customer engagement is based more on assisting our partners in generating more business and bringing them more value. We ensure we do a lot of hand-holding with partners in terms of trust for knowledge. So, every week we have trainings. We look at resellers as an extended arm of ours,” he adds. In the Customer Experience Center, Spectrami trains its partners on a live environment and then they are better equipped when they go to the customer. Apart from the sales and technical enablement, it also focuses on joint marketing campaigns with its partners to generate more leads. Spectrami has 45+ partners across the region who are very actively engaged with the company.

“The growth and the response we are getting makes us feel that we have put the right business model in place.”

FINALLY...

Spectrami has seven vendors on its portfolio with two divisions namely security and storage.

Be it security or storage, the company stands by its philosophy of offering specialised and niche technologies. “I feel we are not in a rush today to add any more technologies. We are in a space which is continuously seeing innovation. We take pride in driving those innovative technologies.

We want to be the first. We are always on the lookout for interesting technologies. That process will always be on and we are evaluating certain technologies,” he says.

Choudha feels that every company you come across today calls itself a VAD. He believes that everyone offers value but Spectrami is different in the way that it had a vision to cater to the niche and specialized technologies. “We have expanded geographies. Now, we have a local footprint in Saudi. We have also opened an office in South Africa. The growth and the response we are getting makes us feel that we have put the right business model in place,” he concludes. ë

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ENTERPRISE COMMUNICATIONS

TALARIAX

Harnessing the Benefits of SMS

TalariaX has proven that a technology as simple as SMS can help enterprises reap rich benefits. n B Y: M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

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alariaX, a gateway appliance manufacturer, is a ten-year old company which is profitable from the first year of its incorporation. The company has a physical presence in three different countries namely Malaysia, the US and Singapore where the headquarters are. With a footprint in 20+ countries operating through a network of channel partners, TalariaX is a sector-agnostic company for 50 different verticals. In Middle East & Africa, the company has 23 customers including high-profile names like Arab Ship Building & Repair Yard, Oman Refinery Petrochemical, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Health, KPMG, Central Bank of Bahrain, Al Baraka Bank, Qatar Foundation etc.

Ashok Kumar V, Chief of Business Development, EMEA & SAARC, TalariaX mentions that the appliances cater to niche applications like alert notifications, third-party application integration, 2FA, enterprise messaging, network monitoring etc. “sendQuick is our brand name and we have separate products for different applications. All our appliances are self-sufficient devices with their own hardware, own OS, own data base and application for unlimited users. So, you buy a box, give it a network point power and it will take care of entire infrastructure,” he adds.

The uptake of TalariaX products had been slow as they have been pretty expensive because of the technology used by the company. As a result, initially, the advanced countries which were much ahead in technology adoption were able to buy the products. Now, the technology is evolving, and today, Talariax can cater to markets

ASHOK KUMAR V

like Africa as well.

TalariaX has recently signed Bulwark as its exclusive distributor in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the UAE. The company already had a partner called Unisys Technologies in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. “With any new product, exposure and visibility are the key elements to increase the awareness of the target segment. At the same time, the audience needs to be educated enough to understand the difference between what we are articulating and what we are thinking. There is a huge gap. That’s why partners like Bulwark make a big difference. There is a huge value addition because first of all they need to establish the fact that we have unique products as it’s a niche segment. I can say we are unique in every way. It is very important to educate the customer before there is an uptake and this can only happen in the Middle East through Bulwark because we don’t have a presence here. So, it is very important that we have somebody with as much dedication and commitment to the product as we have in our principles,” he adds.

To create awareness about the products, TalariaX advertises in a big way and has email campaigns. The company explains the Go-to-Market initiatives for different verticals and makes a case for SMS. “SMS is a humble technology but if you leverage it in a proper way you can reap rich benefits because it is unobtrusive, cost-effective and the person has not to be there at the other end when receiving it. So, you can leverage something like this for business process notification. IT infrastructure is vital to any company. If your IT is down, all the people

CHIEF OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, EMEA & SAARC, TALARIAX

“We are not planning to add any new partnership in the region because we are happy with Bulwark. We need to have patience and trust their ability to deliver.” dependent on it are also sitting ideal. This means loss of revenue, business and addition of expense.

Once you have something like this, you can save a lot,” he elaborates. Hence, the ROI of TalariaX products is that they save cost, increase efficiency and effectiveness.

FINALLY...

With Bulwark entering into the scene, Talariax is expecting phenomenal growth. “We are not planning to add any new partnership in the region because we are happy with Bulwark. We have to give them time and space and enable them as well as trust them. That’s how a relationship works.

We need to have patience and trust their ability to deliver,” he concludes. ë

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ENTERPRISE NETWORKING

BROCADE

Transforming Channel Ecosystem Brocade is bringing in new changes to get a better visibility in the market and also to make its channel partners SDN and data centre focused. n B Y: M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

B

rocade is a multi-billion dollar company but it is relatively unknown in this market.

Recently, the company has announced quite a few management changes and is devising new strategies to generate greater awareness and visibility. As far as SDN is concerned, the company is imparting a lot of education and is also working with its channel partners. It is educating them on what SDN is and what are the benefits. It’s a two way process. The company is putting efforts from its end and also using the channel partners to educate the market about SDN. Brocade has also acquired a company called Vyatta which is a leading virtual router company. “We have 1.6 mn virtual router downloads. SDN means different things to different people. One aspect is virtualization of services of NFV. Another aspect is how you orchestrate your data centre as a whole rather than just managing it in bits and pieces. That’s another area we are focusing on. All our data centre solutions today are orchestrated by people working with the open standards,” says Yarob Sakhnini, Regional Director, MEMA at Brocade.

Until recently, majority of Brocade’s channel partners were campus-focused. They were not data centre focused. This is one of the things that Brocade is working on now. Brocade started a year ago to transform its channel ecosystem into the one which is focused on data centre, SDN,

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and Ethernet fabric. “Some of them were accepting the idea and some were not. We have come through multiple stages of educating the channel partners through education sessions about data centre and about our strategy for data centre. We have given them hands-on training for SDN and we are certifying them in that. Majority of our partners in MEA are certified to sell and support SDN,” adds Sakhnini.

In this market a major chunk of IT infrastructure spending is going into the data centre and Brocade seems to be poised for the growth. In the data centre there are lot of changes now.

Gone are the days of traditional infrastructures.

Sakhnini believes that virtualization is the right way to go. “A lot of people don’t realise what the implications of virtualizing their environment means to them. This is one thing we are educating our customers and partners that virtualization doesn’t mean virtualizing servers and what’s the impact. Few years ago, we used to see 5-6 virtual machines on server now it is 25-30 machines on a server. This is putting a lot of load on the network and this is where Brocade comes in. We address these issues like the higher speed, virtualizing the network itself to stay at the same level of the virtualization of the server etc. There are multiple trends to solve this extra demand on the network like SDN and Ethernet fabric which will help ease the transition that the data centres are going through,” he elaborates.

One of the things that Brocade is working on

YAROB SAKHNINI

REGIONAL DIRECTOR, MEMA AT BROCADE

“Majority of our partners in MEA are certified to sell and support SDN.” is the total data centre infrastructure. It provides an end-to end solution when it comes to data centre infrastructure. “Not a lot of companies do that. Secondly, we are not new to the data centres.

Brocade grew up in the 1990s on the data centre premise. We understand the data centre better than anybody else. We are just expanding that with our SAN infrastructure,” he says.

He informs that the smaller enterprises have a perception that SDN is not for them. Brocade has a different view point. It believes that SDN solves a lot of issues that even a smaller data centre would face. “I think they don’t understand what SDN is. Once you start explaining to them what SDN is then it is a different ball game altogether,” he comments.

FINALLY...

In MENA, different countries have different level of maturity in terms of technology. Some countries have started their data centre migration and the next phase of data centre earlier than the others. “When we talk about data centre, we are looking at these mature countries because they understand the value of what we are bringing to the table and the importance of SDN. To support the same, within my region, we are almost doubling the workforce,” he concludes. ë

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ENTERPRISE NETWORKING

BT GLOBAL SERVICES

Innovative Ways to Offer Security Security concerns are burgeoning and companies offering security solutions are going out of the way to meet the challenge. n B Y: M A N A L I M I S R A < M A N A L I @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

S

ecurity market is growing at an alarming rate in the Middle East.

From past few months, there has been a massive spike in the amount of security spend in the industry. It was evident by the turn out of people at GISEC held in June 2014. The number and types of threats are increasing as well. In MENA region, companies are being targeted more and more. “Because of the incidents, people are waking up and building the SOC capability.

They want to know the threats themselves and they want to know the capabilities to do that,” says Tareque Choudhury, Head of BT Security & Advise, MEA, BT Global Services.

BT, a global cyber security organization, is proactively innovating and launching creative campaigns to take security to the next level. BT is at the bleeding edge of research for Quantum Computing. “Quantum Computing is going to change the security landscape of the entire planet.

With especially written algorithms you can use Quantum computers to do fantastic things that normal computers can’t do in a thousand of years,” said Konstantinos Karagiannis, BT’s Global Technical Lead for Ethical Hacking.

BT has partnered with Toshiba and they have been experimenting with Quantum key distribution. It’s a type of key that you send to encrypt a message and both the parties can have it and use it to securely exchange data. “What’s new is it’s a Quantum key so, if someone tries to intercept

TAREQUE CHOUDHURY

HEAD OF BT SECURITY & ADVISE, MEA, BT GLOBAL SERVICES

“We are launching new products and also investing in our people and capabilities. So, we are growing at a very rapid rate.”

it, the key will fall apart preventing anyone from eavesdropping. BT was able to prove that it works in the real world,” added Karagiannis.

BT has also launched a global campaign called ‘The Art of Connecting’ to help organizations use technology in a more creative way. “The campaign is fantastic because the collusion of consumerization and globalization is happening in the world. Wherever we are in the world it’s so easy to connect to each other and how are we connecting to that in a more efficient and secure way is important. So, security plays a very important part in consumersization and globalization. That’s the core of Art of Connecting: how to do it efficiently and securely,” explains Choudhury.

BT has its own R&D arm in the UK. The company spends about $100 mn a year on R&D and a portion of that is dedicated to security. “We have 12 Security Operation Centres (SOC) around the world working 24*7 and this is where we learn the threats that are happening on a daily basis and those get pushed out to our customers,” he adds. BT works with an indirect channel and has a lot of companies in telecos like Etisalat and du doing indirect channel with BT. “We don’t have a SOC in this region but we have R&D site. About four years ago, BT had partnered with Etisalat and Khalifa University to create an organization called EBTIC where we have people from our R&D centre working side by side from Khalifa University PhD creating security research,” he adds.

In MENA, BT has offices in Dubai, Riyadh, Amman, Jeddah, Oman, Qatar, Morocco and Egypt. “This is where we are taking to the market all of our cyber security products everything from penetration testing to security operation centre consulting to building security operational centres and also compliance consulting as well,” adds Choudhury.

Choudhury says that BT’s global capability with local delivery sets it apart from others. “BT’s bread and butter is its connectivity. The heart is our network. We market ourselves as the global network ICT company. Network is our core and everything around that including security, contact centres, unified communications etc. are built on top of that network,” he says.

FINALLY...

BT is investing in Asia, Middle East and Africa.

“We are launching new products and also investing in our people and capabilities. So, we are growing at a very rapid rate. You can tell by our investment and our strategic partnership at GISEC that security is one of those biggest investments,” concludes Choudhury. ë

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INNOVATIONS

Veeam Management Pack (MP) v7 for System Center The new Veeam Management Pack (MP) version 7 for System Center is now generally available. Veeam MP v7 adds Microsoft Hyper-V support, providing full app-to-metal visibility within Microsoft System Center for both the Hyper-V and VMware vSphere layers to proactively monitor

and alert IT of issues before they affect operations. Veeam has also introduced the full-featured Enterprise Plus and the Enterprise edition to meet the different IT management needs and budgets of System Center users.

Veeam MP v7 extends System Center Operations Manager’s features to

deliver complete visibility of virtual and physical infrastructures and their dependencies. IT managers receive the monitoring, analysis and planning tools needed to quickly resolve issues, make informed decisions and meet the 24/7 availability needs of today’s business.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Real-time Hyper-V performance metrics: Gives Hyper-V administrators detailed real-time insight into what is happening in their environment. Veeam Task Manager for Hyper-V displays real-time memory CPU consumption for the host and each associated VM. n Capacity planning for hybrid cloud: Takes the time and guesswork out of planning hybrid cloud environments. Veeam MP v7 analyzes on-premises virtual workloads and recommends the appropriate Microsoft Azure or VMware vCloud Hybrid Service resources so that IT can efficiently plan and budget for a hybrid cloud strategy. n vSphere host security profile reporting: Provides IT with visibility into vSphere security settings for firewalls and services including changes, when changes occurred, who changed the setting and other critical details needed to track security configuration.

PLEASE SEND YOUR FEEDBACK AT EDITOR@ ENTERPRICECHANNELS.COM

FUSION-IO’S IOCONTROL HYBRID STORAGE Meta Byte Technologies has launched the Fusion-io’s ioControl hybrid storage solutions, designed to help organizations provision, prioritize and control storage performance.

These new Fusion-io ioControl devices are the only hybrid storage that use PCIe flash cards. This literally translates to high performance and lower costs, thus providing enterprises the best use of flash technologies without impacting scale and performance. The ioControl will also allow customers to provide Quality of Service and SLA’s for applications which are defined as Mission critical, Business Critical and Non critical.”

Market research studies indicate that by 2014, up to 60 percent of server workloads will be virtualized as high performance storage systems enable enterprises to virtualize even data-intensive workloads. Thus, solutions such as Fusion-io’s ioControl hybrid storage solutions offer an end-to-end flash memory system for enterprises, which combines the benefits of shared, centralized hybrid storage, with the additional performance boost of server-side flash, delivered by a single vendor.

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KEY CAPABILITIES n Offers ioControl with server-side flash cards in order to optimize storage performance from both ends of the network n based on optimized architecture that combine Fusion-io’s hig performance PCI Express (PCIe) flash cards and SAS HDD’s to deliver the performance of flash with the storage capacity of high speed HDD’s. n offers shared storage performance for data-intensive application clusters such as VMware and Microsoft SQL Server, in an integrated, turnkey solution

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INNOVATIONS

New EventLog Analyzer API from ManageEngine ManageEngine’s new API enables third-party tools to access log data generated by EventLog Analyzer, its security information and event management (SIEM) solution.

While security visibility across all elements of IT infrastructure has become essential, most organizations cannot afford huge investment on big data analytics. The current enhancements in EventLog Analyzer bridge this crucial gap. The benefits of this integration are numerous, but the effort to leverage them is negligible. It does not require professional services or any additional investment to leverage the benefits.

The API is available immediately and works with EventLog Analyzer v 9.0. Users can submit a request to access the API, and the EventLog Analyzer technical support team will get in touch with them. The Professional Edition of EventLog Analyzer starts at $795, and a fully functional, 30-day trial version is available for download.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Lets security administrators feed reams of normalized log data into any third-party application, including crowd-sourced threat intelligence solutions, vulnerability assessment platforms, business intelligence tools or even custom applications for advanced security intelligence and threat protection. n Open database for integration with any third-party application. n Provides Thrift IDL-based APIs which security administrators can use to pull all required data and achieve integration. The power of the API has been demonstrated through a Python-based client as the reference implementation. n Collects, normalizes, analyzes, correlates and stores voluminous logs from heterogeneous sources. Now, the API can provide actionable intelligence and help security admins trace, thwart and combat evolving threats.

A10 Thunder SPE Appliance A10 Networks Thunder SPE appliance family is a new line of highspeed, high-capacity application networking appliances.

These solutions have robust security and processing hardware functionality that allow them to continue to provide full system functionality, even while simultaneously under volumetric attacks, without impacting system performance.

Recently, the frequency and volume of DDoS attacks has risen dramatically, resulting in costly network and service outages. With the high throughput nature of these attacks, the market needs appliances capable of performing detection and mitigation tasks rapidly in hardware to adequately prevent data center infrastructure from being overwhelmed. Thunder SPE appliances provide high-performance, hardware-based security and policy enforcement to all A10 product lines, including Thunder ADC, CGN and TPS, delivering the performance and capacity customers need to ensure their networks protected against high-speed, volumetric attacks.

Thunder SPE appliances start at $164,000.

KEY CAPABILITIES n Leverage A10’s innovative new Security and Policy Engine (SPE) to perform security and policy enforcement at ultra high speeds. n Deliver up to a 40 percent processing performance boost relative to current systems, creating a very powerful and secure application networking solution for large service provider and enterprise customers n Capable of performing any policy-based networking actions in hardware, including those involving security and quality of service, and can enforce at ultra high speeds in increasingly dynamic cloud environments where policies change frequently. n Particularly powerful in preventing the rising occurrence of DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks from debilitating a customer’s network and server infrastructure.

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SHOW CASE

GITEX 2014 to Showcase US$15 Billion Opportunity Spanning more than 100,000 square metres of exhibition space, this year’s edition of GITEX Technology Week, Dubai from 12-16 October, 2014 will bring together more than 142,000 ICT professionals, 25,000 C-level executives and over 3,700 exhibitors from 61 countries on one united platform. n B Y: T U S H A R S A H U < T U S H A R @ A C C E N T I N F O M E D I A . C O M >

W

ith regional ICT spending projected to cross US$ 15 billion this year and hit US$ 20 billion by 2020 (Source: International Data Corporation), this year’s GITEX Technology Week - the largest ICT event in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia (MEASA) – is all set to consolidate its position as the premier gateway to the world’s fastest-growing and investment-rich ICT markets. Megastar rapper and entrepreneur, Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson had aptly said “Walking through GITEX is like walking through the future”.

Increasing expenditure in the developing regional ICT market has spurred exhibitor demand to an all-time high; the proof is not hard to find considering the fact that majority of floor space at the region’s most important marketplace to showcase cutting-edge trends and agendas has been already sold out. The significant increase in demand has resulted in early commitments from new countries including the Czech Republic, Singapore and Switzerland. Africa, a huge market in terms of ICT growth, is strongly represented this year with the selection of Nigeria as the show’s Official Country Partner.

Exhibition at the GITEX Technology Week ensures more business opportunities thanks to the active networking it provides with 25,000+ C-level executives from key progressing industries. Moreover, exposure is enhanced, firms get the chance to capitalise on the top most ICT trends and in addition, they get even more ROI. The promotion guaranteed by the event is unparalleled as one gets to promote business at the region’s highest PR buzz generating trade event.

Attendance at the event also brings with it several perks like networking, building relationships, learning new technologies, and the excellent prospect of meeting more than 3,500 exhibiting

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LOCAL CUSTOMERS DISCUSSING WITH A VENDOR’S REPERSENTATIVE

“The expo will feature the world’s top ICT brand in 12 sector-specific technology.” companies from the complete I.T. hemisphere.

With Ericsson, Philips, Redington, Sage, AT&T, Equinix and many more leading international brands already on-board, GITEX Technology Week will feature the world’s top ICT brands in 12 sector-specific technology industries supporting four industry-leading themes: Smart, Cloud, Big Data and Mobility.

Spanning more than 100,000 square metres of exhibition space, this year’s edition of GITEX Technology Week at Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) from 12-16 October, 2014 will bring together more than 142,000 ICT professionals, 25,000 C-level executives and over 3,700 exhibitors from 61 countries on one united platform.

“GITEX Technology Week continues to evolve year-on-year and this year is no different - our

largest show to date will cover every aspect of the global ICT spectrum and showcase a raft of significant technology and mobile innovations that will shape our future societies for decades to come,” said Trixie LohMirmand, Senior Vice President, DWTC. He further added, “Our 34th show will host cutting-edge technology demonstrations, engaging conference programmes, wide-ranging discussion forums and unparalleled networking opportunities for tailored sectors across the ICT industry. Exhibitors, visitors and the industry at large can expect a dynamic offering in-line with this year’s governing theme of ‘Reimagining Our Future’.”

For more information on the 34th GITEX Tecnology Week - running at DWTC from 12-16 October,2014-visit:www.gitex.com. ë

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